Western Railroad Discussion > Quick Discussion

There was a incident that happened on the BNSF's Southwest Division over the weekend (110813) that led to a three-man crew and its two students to be pulled from service. A safety briefing was created by a Terminal Sup. and sent to other terminals and printed out so crews could be briefed.

The part of the printed out briefing that I want opinions on, by rail and railfans (relate this to your own workplace), is the ending where each crew member is mentioned with age, years of service and their disciplinary histories (attendance, missed calls, Levels, etc) bulleted with dates for all eyes to see.

Why should we need to know that? How is that pertinent to a safety briefing? No privacy, just full blast.

Posted from Android



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/13/13 04:18 by Hookdragkick.

That info might be helpful to supervisors, but not everyone on the railroad. Can you give us a hint to as what they got pulled from service for?

Ted Curphey
Ontario, OR

In a nutshell: two loaded runaways on the Transcon doing 60+ mph before they left the track on a curve.

Don't 100% rely on an emergency application of a car to be your only brake.

Posted from Android



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 11/13/13 04:54 by Hookdragkick.

Hookdragkick Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> In a nutshell: two loaded runaways on the Transcon
> doing 60+ mph before they left the track on a
> curve.
>
> Don't 100% rely on an emergency application of a
> car to be your only brake.
>
> Posted from Android

Well, Duhhh!

IMO, including the work histories was inappropriate, unless these guys have done the same kind of thing before.

Realist Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Hookdragkick Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > In a nutshell: two loaded runaways on the
> Transcon
> > doing 60+ mph before they left the track on a
> > curve.
> >
> > Don't 100% rely on an emergency application of
> a
> > car to be your only brake.
> >
> > Posted from Android
>
> Well, Duhhh!
>
> IMO, including the work histories was
> inappropriate, unless these guys have done the
> same kind of thing before.

Names, work history, discipline history, are all private and were never part of a post incident briefing at my former place of work. References such as ".... even with 25 years experience, everyone must be continually aware of...." just to emphasize the importance of what is now called situational awareness were used.

it's the ole this will happen to you if you screw up attitude ... so it you don't want this to happen to you follow the company rules

Hookie,

A copy of that handout was sitting in the cab of our westbound to Needles last trip. From the looks of it, I don't think that presentation was ever supposed to get to the TY&E population. I think it was more of a handout for only bosses to see.

Yes, I see things like that happen ocassionally at work (not in the railraod industry). Quite often it is via email where an email is sent to a supervisor reporting something and the supervisor forwards up the chain. This email may also go to other supervisors. Some well meaning supervisors think the info would be helpful to his/her employees, but does not edit out the more "sensitive" information. They just simply forward the whole email to the employees.

Gary

I've had plenty of jobs where people got fired...sometimes a manager would explain the circumstances to reinforce whatever rule they broke, but I certainly never got a printout with detailed information or their history.

Wow! I've never seen any railroad I work for name names in any kind of incident bulletin intended for rank-and-file employees. I hope these guys have contacted their LC and the union spanks the carrier. Totally unnecessary and irresponsible on the carrier's part.

Disciplinary history is widely available for stock brokers, etc. In contrast, doctor failures are generally hidden from view unless a case is actually decided and affirmed in court. Virtually all malpractice claims are settled and placed under confidentiality. And the guy goes right on practicing.

I have noticed a trend on the BNSF incident briefings lately. It will say job or train symbol, on duty time, crew member ages/time in service ect. There is also a statement on many of them that says something to the effect of "every day thousands of BNSF team members come to work and do there's job safely". I'm not sure why they just don't strait out tell us who did it and they are a screw up and it's there fault. Because that is pretty much what they are telling us.
Kevin

I don't think it's necessary. A missed call in 1996 when your first child was born would be pretty irrelevant to whether or not you applied sufficient handbrakes in 2013 (JUST an example).

Surely there is something in company policy that somewhat prohibits, or minimized how much of this personnel file info can be released.

Pump

This will be a nightmare when the lawyers get ahold of it!!!

Even if the names were not mentioned wouldn't everyone know who it was anyway?

Todd Clark
Canyon Country, CA
Trainorders.com

Sounds like an "oops" on the part of whoever released the info; looks like it should have been "eyes only" for management types. Maybe there was a procedural change somewhere in the chain that was mis-interpreted and resulted in the release of TMI?
FWIW and my 2 cents...too much irrelevant personal data in the BNSF release.

Hookdragkick Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> There was a incident that happened on the BNSF's
> Southwest Division over the weekend (110813) that
> led to a three-man crew and its two students to be
> pulled from service ....

A bit crowded in the cab? Or did one of the crew occupy a cab on a trailing unit with the two trainees. It does not sound like the best on the job training to me.

Webmaster,
Yes, people would know regardless. Plus, any employee could see fresh names and entry dates on a 'Cutoff/TM Authority board'. Connect the dots.

TS1457,
Very crowded, especially on a switch engine. The brakeman would of probably occupied the second motor till they were ready to job brief for the next customer. That leaves the engineer standing, teaching his engineer trainee.

Posted from Android



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/13/13 14:20 by Hookdragkick.

Thecrew members involved will serve their punishment for not adhering to the rules, to be sure. The Company, for disseminating that information to the rank-and-file, will be involved in a long and expensive punitive battle with those employees and their union lawyers. As previously stated, prior work history (regardless of it being relevant or not) has no outcome on the current situation. If it was relevant, or they did take similar shortcuts in the past, they would have either served time out of service, or been somehow otherwise disciplined by the company, and the matter summarily closed. Quite simply, if they were repeat offenders of that particular rule why were they continued to be allowed to work?
So the company probably screwed this one up...in the end it won't matter. The men will serve time for the incident, they will win punitive damages from the company for their private work histories being public information, and then the company will (after settlement) ratchet up the testing of those particular employees until they catch them doing something wrong and fire them a few years down the road.
I've seen it happen too many times in my career.

For what it is worth, At CSX, when an incident review comes out, all the report gives related to the employees involved is the offending employee's years of service, not their entire work history. Then they go on to describe what happened in the vaguest terms possible, mostly ignoring locations and using generalizations like "in a yard where a crew was working"
The managers who have to brief us then fill in the specifics as to where and when verbally.

So do the employees have a chance of "making it over the derail" or are they gone?

mapboy