Rail workers unions are cheering a deal with Norfolk Southern Corp. that allows railroad employees to report safety issues without fear of retaliation or punishment, thus contributing to safer operations, they say.
The deal comes one year after a train of the Atlanta-based railroad’s tank cars derailed and caught fire in East Palestine, Ohio, spilling noxious chemicals and forcing the evacuation of residents. Since then, the railroad has implemented numerous safety improvements, even as its trade group, The Association of American Railroads (AAR), has lobbied against federal plans for stricter oversight and regulation of the industry.
The new deal calls for joint participation in the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA)’s Confidential Close Call Reporting System (C3RS) pilot program, including cooperation from Norfolk Southern and two unions; the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET) and the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers – Transportation Division (SMART-TD).
Under the one-year C3RS pilot, covered NS employees can report safety concerns with the certainty that such reports will not result in discipline, BLET said. The system works by enlisted the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to “deidentify” data and provide it for review by a joint committee of the railroad and labor representatives, who, with FRA’s guidance, will identify and implement corrective actions to improve safety.
In a statement, BLET said its members who work in the cabs of Norfolk Southern’s locomotives welcome this agreement. “Our union has had years of experience with close call reporting programs at Amtrak and other passenger railroads, along with a handful of smaller freight carriers, but only 23 out of the nation’s 800 railroads have adopted C3RS,” BLET’s first vice president, Mark Wallace, said in a release.
“This close call reporting system, which is like safety programs successfully used in commercial aviation, will help put an end to the blame game and place Norfolk Southern’s trains on safer journeys. We fervently hope that it will be a model for other Class I freight carriers,” Wallace said.
However, BLET also called out the AAR for paying “lip service” to safety while backtracking on safety agreements.
Indeed, in an email to reporters last week, the AAR had listed numerous voluntary safety improvement steps taken in the past year by its member companies, including increasing the frequency of hot bearing detectors whose failure may have contributed to the East Palestine wreck. But in that same statement, AAR criticized the Railway Safety Act now working its way through Congress for its “challenges” and “problematic provisions.”
