Railroad Workplace Safety
Some acts of negligence are the result of situational decisions. Split second decisions while driving a car can be the product of negligence that foreseeably cause injury to another. At thirty miles an hour, a person’s car gains forty-four feet a second. For that reason, the fate of others is determined in a heartbeat.
Other acts of negligence are made by premeditated corporate calculations in a boardroom. These decisions have no excuse from being made under pressure.
One of the decisions made by railroad companies is to use property not owned by them to conduct their business. Parking lots of retail businesses or unused city properties are examples of workplaces for railroad workers in maintenance of way. Workers are ordered to show up at these places to organize crews, pick up equipment and trucks.
There are two characteristics of these non-railroad property workplaces:
1. It is free to the railroad company.
2. There is no practical way that the railroad company can honor its duty to provide workplace safety.
A classic example of this mismanagement occurred in the small town of Nebraska City, Nebraska in which Union Pacific Railroad Co ordered employees to pick up trucks and organized work gangs on municipal property under a viaduct. This out-of-the-way property was not used or supervised by Nebraska City. The railroad did not reach an agreement or even inform Nebraska City of its free use of this property.
Union Pacific did not determine that the property was being supervised by the city or undertaken the duty itself. As a practical matter Union Pacific could not assure the safety of the property as a workplace. No permanent supervision or security was in force. It is important to note that this is not an isolated occurrence but exists today throughout the United States.
A maintenance of way employee showed up at this site under orders to pick up a truck. He arrived a day after a snow storm. While walking up to the truck, he fell into an open manhole. The manhole cover had been removed by someone--an act of some effort that could have never gone unnoticed in a supervised railroad property. This bizarre violation of workplace safety occurred as a result of a cold, calculated decision by management to save money and unethically use municipal property without permission or arraignments. This management decision is occurring today and will occur tomorrow.
Attorneys representing workers in FELA cases should take to task the railroad companies putting their workers at risk by trespassing on property owned by others.
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