Workers “know the truth” about the derailment, why are they being ignored?
work-bites.com
work-bites.com
While I am in complete solidarity with the workers and think the workers should come before the shareholders, this article is just leveraging the disaster to reiterate the old talking points. Overworked workers might be the root cause, but they are not the proximate cause for this event.
When a union rep brings up safety concerns, it's usually in the same conversation as employee pay, and the rep and company negotiate in that context to provide a solution for both issues.
The most safety concerns the union rep can cite - the greater leverage they have in salary negotiations.
This is why when a union says they've been bringing up safety concerns, you have to take it with a grain of salt.
...this issue is also why the government has moved most safety inspection responsibilities away from unions and towards government agencies, like OSHA.
Givernment regulations make govt big and I'm not sure it is better than allowing workers more management and decission making. But again, the workers should want to participate.
May be this railroad employ immigrants who do not have all the rights and afraid of loosing the job and so.. not sure how then this can be solved. May be then local population where the road is located should somehow be more curious what is going on there and talk more to workers, but without relying on some politicians for this because it is easy to buy one person.
For example, they never demanded a reinstatement to the Braking Safety Rules that Trump rolled-back.
People need to stop looking to unions for safety regulation. That isn't there job. They are there to increase the PAY of workers.
OSHA and other government institutions are there to ensure safety.
While the acute response and understanding/limiting of risk is happening, the only perspective I need from the train workers is an accurate accounting of who and what was on the train that needs rescuing/safing.
After that, when we do the root cause analysis, that’s when we need the perspective and opinion of the workers and their union.
It is genuinely important; it’s not that important right this second. Whatever was wrong in labor policies will still be wrong next month when we dig into that.
You can argue all you want about what exactly started the fire and do a root cause analysis. Of course that should be done.
But whatever comes out of that root cause is not a defense for that group of people outside the house. But if you wait long enough, it'll definitely be used to derail the conversation into a sophisticated version of "the front fell off".
Next month, probably not so much.
Personally I'd prefer to learn the facts about what happened rather than hear from people promoting their own agendas.
In that light, I hoped this article might have some first-hand testimony from the workers. If the author thinks the workers are being ignored, why didn't they talk to the workers?
=> Why didn't the authors talk to the workers?
Because, as they explain in the article, the workers don't say anything as they fear retaliation.
It's not just the "not the right time" narrative though, they're pulling out all the stops on this catastrophe including UFOs.
Every hazmat train that moves around while there are massive issues is an as massive risk for everyone along its route as the East Palestine disaster is.
Take your safety concerns to the NTSB (someone with an NTSB jacket will no doubt be on scene). If they didn't listen to you when you warned them previously of this outcome, it's fine to invoke an "I told you so". If you get an inadequate response there, escalate to the Secretary of Transportation.