Former BNSF track inspector who said he was fired for reporting too many track defects secretly recorded his boss for "my own protection." kstp.com/5-inv...
Typical company "We encourage our employees to submit any complaint " Translation: We don't want to hear any complaints and will fire anyone's ass that does complain.
This appears that this was not a "complaint" per se; It was HIS JOB to report safety issues. (hence: "Track inspector"... but never report to the Feds)
They support submitting internal complaints so they can bury it. No major company is okay with calling any regulatory body to ask about safety, testing, or regulation questions.
Yeah, it's disgusting but true. The better a person is at their job, the more likely they are to spot criminal behavior or not be a "Team Player" and cover stuff up. I've learned that if a job listing says "Must be a Team Player" they are crooks and doing illegal crap and will also endanger and/or exploit the employees.
not if they are appealing....if ANY monies are paid out.... and the railroad wins the appeal.... it must be paid back and at 10% he probably doesn't have 200000 dollars laying around
All in the name of “Precision Scheduled Railroading.” Look it up. In short, management cuts every corner possible to make the stock price go up, by running 300+ car trains with remote control locomotives throughout the consist to cut down on crews. Sell off locomotives, defer maintenance, and much more. And again, all to make the stock price look better.
Agreed, all in the interest of maximizing profits, benefits to investors and Sr. Exec. compensation. This is what happens when Wall Street fund managers started running railroads vs experienced career railroaders.
Get out of reefers, containers and dry vans if you want to be treated better. You’re competing against the 3rd world if you don’t. Doesn’t apply to to LTL or private fleets.
This reminds me of Boeing saying that safety is their number 1 priority when it is obvious that their only priority is money. It won't change until the law changes and holds company executives criminality liable for avoidable accidents.
@@johnmourer5747 unfortunately I learned this the hard way. I thought HR would have my back when I presented evidence that my manager defamed me and prevented me from getting the job I wanted. I’m not sure I would have gotten a lawyer if things were different. Looking back I should’ve noticed the signs of a toxic manager and switched jobs.
This is what happens when companies buy politicians who run the regulatory body that that oversees safety standing in the path of shareholder value.thank you for your courage and commitment sir.
If you are being bullied, threatened, harassed or even being framed, the sooner you fight back the better. I went through something 2001 to 2006 that would have been all over the Twin Cities news had I gone public with what was happening. I should have filed my complaint as soon as the threats started.
And the Railroads want to Eliminate the Conductor making the Engineer the only person on a 3-mile long train. This is Dangerous and Plain Stupid. Shame🤪👎
That paid mouthpiece at the end needs to be required to live right next to the very railroads she covers for. Just like all those vulnerable and voiceless who have been so seriously affected by the lies she's projecting.
Everything that happened to him is the way the class 1 railroads do business! They don’t have enough people to do the maintenance and the bottom line is how much money they can make! I think BNSF has had 2 mainline derailments in the past 10 -12 days ! I’m retired with 42 years of service in maintenance of Way!
Yes, the "new management" style of railroads, and other businesses has created a toxic work place condition for the older craft employees and through the ranks low and mid level management folks that were very good at their jobs and knew much more than their recent hire supervisors about the industry. This led to adversarial conditions. This paved the way for a wave of retirements of experienced employees. The railroads are worse off for it and it shows with all the list of problems created way to lengthy to be listed via this medium..
I worked for BNSF in the mechanical dept ,track dept then operating dept as a Brakeman I see the trains every day I hear all sorts of defects wheels and brakes mostly nothing gets fixed I was injured by another crew they came back on the adjacent track smearing me off the switch and thrown 30 fy down the tracl the crew didnt report the accident they went home with out saying any thing I got a small settelment told not to come back!
BNSF is their own worst enemy. I am retired off Union Pacific, but I operated on BNSF between Tacoma, Washington, and Portland, Oregon. I was a local, state, and regional union officer for the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers & Trainmen. We used to submit a lot of safety concerns to BNSF, and when there was little to no response, we would elevate those issues through our state safety director who would submit them to FRA if there was no reasonable response. That state director was a BNSF employee, who found himself in a whole heap of trouble, to include trumped up allegations of criminal assault; and he was fired as a result. I represented him at his on-property discipline hearings, which served as a basis for a whistleblower complaint with OSHA, and subsequent civil action in Federal District Court. He came away with a jury verdict of $1.25 million. Railroads believe they are above the law, but the Railway Safety Improvement Act of 2008 gave us something to fight back with.
As a kid growing up in the late 90’s and early 00’s. Santa Fe was always my favorite railroad. I’m a longtime Warbonnet Fan. Never cared for Black/Orange.
My husband found out a RR yard in Los Angeles near Eagle Rock was dumping pools of oil into the L.A. River at night or whenever there was a storm (the helicopters who check would not be around). After each dump, they would walk the area and scatter cement on any oil that showed, to cover it up.
We encourage you to report all track safety issues as long as it there is no down time on the tracks for repair. By coming forward he's opened the door for more to follow.
I worked for a steel place for 20 years. They had incentives setup were you would get a bonus for no accidents. That's basically saying don't report any accidents and will pay to keep your mouth shut.
That is an interpretation, though. You might just as easily say, “Follow the safety guidelines and make more money.” In my experience, both as a working industrial electrician and a business owner myself, people fall into two general camps. You first have the “ramrods” who believe they can avoid layoffs through productivity, and try to bypass safety to go faster. This is a smaller group. The far larger group is the people who generally follow safety guidelines, but if and when an incident occurs, tries to hide the safety violation or circumstances in fear of punishment. I’ll use an example. Recently, I had an apprentice call off several days in a row claiming to be sick. During the third day, my secretary reported a workman’s compensation claim was submitted by the apprentice. Come to find out that the apprentice had cut his hand attempting to strip a large conductor. He never reported the injury, to his journeyman, to his foreman, or to the safety man. The apprentice claimed it happened with the retractable box cutter provided by my company. I was immediately suspect as cutting yourself unintentionally with a box cutter that automatically retracts is difficult. Upon examination of the knife, it had no blood residue whatsoever on it. Worse still, the paper tab that prevents the blade from sticking out while in the packaging was still inside the handle, meaning the blade was never used. Turns out the apprentice was using a personal blade. I was doubly confused as I had purchased several wire stripping power tool kits from Milwaukee that remove the need for cutting a wire with a knife altogether (for 600 dollars a piece, these kits pay for themselves in weeks, both much more safe and way faster than a knife). One such kit was less than 10 feet from where the apprentice was working. An electrician’s hands are his money. I’m well within my rights to fight the claim. The point here is that the apprentice took a relatively minor injury and made it into a more severe one by hiding it from his employer. Because he just put gloves back on, didn’t clean the wound, and continued working, his cut became infected and widened. Had he received medical attention and stitches right away, he would have been better off. Safety is so difficult because many people think it’s a joke or that they are the exception, they can’t fall off a lift or have a tool dropped on their heads.
This is a direct result of Jack Welch style "line must go up" leadership. Short term profits above all, even if it means basic safety gets pushed to the wayside. Even if it means crews can't take a day off. Even if it means the company actually gets worse long term. Short term line goes up.
I've been a rail fan my whole life, I'm near 60, and we've been saying for years, they have to be breaking massive rules and criminally covering it up. As a railfan I know a lot more about the basics of how a railroad operates, than the average person on the street. It's a hobby to read all about stuff related to railroads and their equipment. All the corporations, are acting this way, not just the railroads, and it's because the vast majority of politicians on BOTH sides are guilty of repealing regulations, and/or defunding the outfits that investigate corporate criminal behavior. In other words... our politicians and the heads of these corporations, are already filthy rich, but they are willing to literally kill others, to make one extra buck. Think about that people, think about that long and hard.
Do yourselves a favor. Turn on Google Earth. Look at Northwest North Dakota. Roll back time on the Satellite image to 10 years ago then to today. That is the Bakken Oil Field. That oil is transported every night through the Twin Cities on the worst rail system in America. All because of road salt. They never replaced the old rails and they are splitting everyday. How we havent had a major train explosion in Minneapolis.... MIRACLE!
18 year carman here. I can tell you this man is preaching truth when he said they hired him to do a job, and fired him when he did his job. The rail industry is a crazy place.
After 21.5 years at the Santa Fe/BNSF and Four years at UP none of this is a surprise. It’s all about the money and it seemed to get worse after Warren Buffet bought the company.
One huge problem has always been fining companies for individuals decisions. So the company takes a hit, actually the shareholders do, and the idiot who made the toxic decision walks away scot free. When this happens we have broken the feed back loop and it needs to be strongly in position to stop this idiotic crap from happening. If a "manager" makes a stupid or illegal choice he should have to pay for that choice or there is no learning going on.
I know a guy who was a senior engineer on the railroad. He was fired because they say he stole a pair of gloves, they said when a where he stole them, he had credit card receipts showing he was out of town at that time. They still fired him, but it was because he made too much money compared to a new hire.
I feel sorry for this man, as a retired Railroader I've seen this shit pulled so many times, this guy has my total respect but unfortunately the railroads are hiring former fry Cooks from McDonald's to become railroaders and they wouldn't know a track Hammer from a tie plate but they know what temperature the oil should be in a deep fryer when they throw the goddamn fries in!
I worked for McDonald's for over 15 years and I'm also an avid rail fan. I know what a spiking hammer is, spiking patterns, tie plates, anti creep clips for welded rail, fish plates and the required bolt, nut and washer patterns, the weights of various rail types just by looking at the cross sections, how to read signal aspects ( the N&W color position lights, Southern Railway ABS signals as these were the local varieties until a few a years ago ), how crossing gates are tripped, a basic understanding of how Norfolk Southern does their dispatching including track warrants and a whole lot more. Not all of us that worked there are a bunch of dumb asses. Some of us are capable of doing major repairs on equipment including keeping the fryers fixed. As for the ice cream machines, they work fine when they are new, but once they get to be about ten years old they start having major problems and they cost about $40k to replace.
Warren Buffet should hire him to be an outside contractor consultant to inspect his railroad and keep its incompetent leadership in-line. Just saying! 😮
If I ever am in a position to choose which railroad I want to use to ship my goods, I’ll never use BNSF. This isn’t going away, especially with the derailments. Hats off to this guy for standing up to the man!
Spoken and written company statement: "We encourage our employees to submit any safety complaint." Unspoken and unwritten company statement: "If you do, you know what will happen, because you just know, right?" It's called intimidation and bullying. Managing for profit. Greed. Avarice. When the Appeals Court finds in favor of the inspector, as it should, then it would be so nice if they would tack on another $200 mln or so just for BNSF being so roundly stupid and arrogant for thinking they can waddle into court and drag it out and sweep it under the rug. Consider those as punitive damages, regardless of what the law might stipulate as some ridiculous limit. There needs to be some kind of effect on the company so they feel the pain. If the money can't be assessed, then maybe slice up their holdings and let the inspector decide who gets what, how many slices it gets cut into, and how small they are.
This would seem to show that freight rail lines have been given to much latitude. The lack of accountability means that they are violating regulations. This puts the public at risk. Amtrak has been forced to make allowances for freight traffic at a time when train travel should be getting a major push to expand. More malfeasance by corporations causing severe accidents and destruction.
This guy is a hero. With all the derailments lately, (one just a mile from my home, so close that I heard it happen) and all the toxic hazardous $hit they transport, he is the guy protecting the general public from serious harm or death...........They will try to wear him down financially in court, hopefully he prevails and they are forced to pay. I live about 50 miles from the site of the East Palestine derailment, they have done their best to cover up and deflect the blame to skirt the cost of clean up and damages to the people affected.
BNSF absolutely retaliate against employees and contractors. I have personally seen it. After reporting multiple fuel spills of at least 5000 gallons of diesel, several over 10,000 gallons, that were not reported and had been both literally and figuratively covered up. I wasn't as fortunate as this man so I'm happy to hear he prevailed. The money isn't the important element of his win. It's the public awareness of it.
That missing 7 million should be taken out of the judges account for allowing that to happen, 9 million for that guys reputation and career ruin is absolutely deserved
“Defects are down” because they hired someone who chooses to “have a conversation” instead of doing what’s right by reporting defects and reporting bad behaviors!
Transit buses are another area where broken suspension components , broken and worn brake parts , worn or missing steering parts , worn tires and over worked employees , bad seats .... leaking diesel fuel . Profit over passengers well being . Investigate this !!!!!
They need to suspend that train company's ability to operate until they can prove that their tracks are safe. Because apparently they're paying their employees to operate unsafe illegal tracks.
The owner of the company is a major player in our current presidents political party. They’ll glance over it, because it’s important not to anger campaign donors ya know.
My friend works for the airline industry and it’s the same thing. Cutting cost to get massive profits. And we see every year airline accidents and problems coming more common, and how many trains have crash with horrific outcomes lately?
Just another result of deregulation of the industry. Whether it's the airlines, trucking, railroads or electric utilities, the end result is higher prices for customers and less safety for the public AND the employees all to justify higher profits and management bonuses.
