Railroad Workers United Organizes Vote No campaign on Union Pacific's Total Safety Culture

Railroad Workers United Organizes Vote No campaign on Union Pacific's Total Safety Culture:

Railroaders and Unions need a real safety program, not "blame-the workers" safety programs!

For those of us employed by the railroad we have seen many programs implemented by management come and go. The new flavor of the month for Union Pacific TE&Y employees is the system wide implementation of a behavioral based blame-the worker safety program knows as Total Safety Culture, TSC for short. Blame the workers safety programs include:

Behavior-Based Safety
Safety Incentives
Injury Discipline

BBS (behavioral based safety) programs shift the responsibility for hazards that exist in the workplace away from the employer and place the blame on the worker for unsafe acts. Nowhere in TSC is there a place for management accountability in terms of hazards that exist in the workplace or a place for correcting them. What TSC never recognizes is the fact that, "All workplace injuries are a result of exposure to hazards. There are NO exceptions!" Instead TSC looks at things like PPE (personal protective equipment) such as safety glasses, earplugs, communication, body mechanics, training, environment and awareness. TSC in no way initiates the removal or lessens the exposure to hazards. The use of PPE is the least effective way of avoiding hazards on the job, in TSC however it takes center stage. The best way to avoid injury in the workplace is using the "Hierarchy of Controls."

Hierarchy of Controls

Most Effective	1. Elimination or Substitution
	2. Engineering Controls (Safeguard technology)
	3. Warnings
	4. Training and Procedures (Administrative Controls)
Least Effective	5. Personal Protective Equipment

Unfortunately in BBS programs like TSC elimination or substitution of hazards is considered least effective. In the diagram to the left the most effective way to deal with hazards is clearly "Elimination or substitution." TSC would place PPE as the #1 way of avoiding injury and turns the hierarch of controls upside down. With TSC, "why eliminate the hazard when you can simply buy personal protective equipment?" Historically as we look back, railroaders remember conditions that previously existed that have been eliminated. For example the "link and pin" method of coupling freight cars together. Surely this method of connecting freight cars left thousands without fingers and hands. No more is the "footboard" which undoubtedly led to the injury or untimely death of many switchmen. No longer do brakemen walk the tops of cars to tighten hand brakes. Reduced are our hours of service from the sixteen hour day to the twelve. Employees in the car shop are aided by advancements and pneumatics and rigging that reduce lifting strains and injuries. The simple fact is that elimination of hazards and the substitution for previous risk exposure are in part what lead to real safety in our work environments.

TSC is the brainchild of Psychologist E. Scott Geller and Safety Performance Solutions. To provide some insight into how Mr. Geller thinks, here is a quote from him while speaking at the NACOSH (National Advisory Committee on Occupational Safety & Health) in Washington, D.C. on April 9, 1997, "So putting up a guard might encourage them (workers) to get closer to the hole that's being guarded, or encourage them to take more risks because of the extra perceived safety by that guard."

TSC has another insidious aspect as well; it provides perks for our fellow workers who implement it. For example, time off the job away from the work that the individual would normally do in their craft. How seductive this is must be, to have a 9-5 job Monday through Friday, in an air-conditioned office. This is surely a far cry from a life lived on call, working in extremely cold or hot climates with time spent away from family and friends. Working in the dirty environment of the car shop, the right of way or any of the work environments our respective railroad crafts work in. It provides access for the TSC implementers to "the back office," and the managers who are there. TSC degrades rank and file solidarity in a major way. Union members are co-opted to be a tool of the company instead of working for their own craft union towards building a real union based safety program.

RWU and its members seek to provide an alternative to TSC. In place of TSC we are building a movement towards a principled union based safety program such as the following:

FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES OF A UNION APPROACH TO SAFETY & HEALTH

Injuries and illnesses are a result of exposures to hazards
Labor and managements goals differ
Union only mechanisms to protect our interests
Worker and union involvement in every aspect of program
Union representatives need time, access and resources

The union approach to worker safety is far different from that of management's. Elements of a union based program would include a real commitment from management in any agreement, worker and union involvement, hazard identification and assessment, hazard prevention, elimination and control, worksite inspections and incident investigations as well as the evaluation of the effectiveness of the program and medical care. The mechanisms unions can use for this are as follows. Health and Safety committees (union only & joint), procedures to shut down hazardous jobs, the right to refuse unsafe work, mechanism to review workplace changes, measure hazards and control efforts (not just reported injuries), training and education.

The rank and file members of the various crafts on the Union Pacific Railroad will soon be exposed to TSC. It is time that our various craft unions become involved in union based safety program that:

Identify the root cause of injury and illness
Communicates problems to a Union Health & Safety Committee
Files health and safety grievances when needed
Refusing hazardous or unsafe work
Honesty and accurately reports injuries or illnesses
Identifies managers who are not addressing health and safety problems

Remember health and safety is a mandatory subject for bargaining! There are documented cases where management refused to bargain over the implementation of BBS and the union won! For example, in an unfair labor practice charge filed by the American Postal Workers Union (APWU) - Philadelphia Local - the National Labor Relations Board supported the unions position that management must bargain with the union over a safety program which affects its members. RWU is currently hard at work looking at the RLA and how unions can bargain over TSC instead of merely accepting it.

In short TSC focuses on ways to identify workers who are behaving "unsafely" and coax, cajole and/or threaten them into behaving safely on the job, while ignoring the job hazards that can cause workers to be injured or made ill. TSC ignores the fact that all workplace injuries and illnesses are caused by workers' exposure to hazards and hazardous conditions on the job. TSC focuses on railroad employee behavior NOT where it should be - on fixing workplace hazards. TSC condemns railroad workers as the problem while never asking "why" in regards to real safety. Railroad companies like behavior-based approaches because management is taken off the hook for fixing hazards.

Issues like adequate staffing levels, limits on extended work hours, humane work load and the pace of work are not even considered. The solidarity of union power is weakened, to the delight of management. Behavior-based safety is a win-win proposition only for rail carriers, while for railroad workers and our unions, the opposite is true. Behavior-based safety programs focus attention away from hazardous workplace conditions and thwart hazard identification and control efforts, with harmful and tragic results.

Instead of TSC, Railroad Workers United recommends that unions redirect the focus towards building real union safety programs that work and holding management accountable for their action or lack their of.

Total Safety Culture is a sham with a hidden agenda!

Even in cases where a behavioral safety program is implemented with assurances that there will be no discipline, there are several problems. When workers report injuries, they often suffer inquisitions & investigations to determine what "unsafe behaviors" they were engaging in. The total emphasis for corrective action remains on promoting safe worker behavior rather than eliminating or reducing hazards.

Please join Railroad Workers United in its "Vote No to Total Safety Culture" campaign in your terminal. Show your solidarity with your brothers and sisters in all the various rail crafts by fighting against this atrocious program. Click here to download information on TSC as well as a "Vote No to TSC" flyer.

Please see the below list of links to sites with information on BBS.

Hazards Magazine: http://www.hazards.org/bs/index.htm

Blame the Worker - The Rise of Behavioral-Based Safety Programs:

http://multinationalmonitor.org/mm2000/00november/corp1.html

United Steel Workers: http://www.usw.org/usw/program/content/1611.php

ACTU:

http://www.actu.asn.au/

UFCW:

http://www.ufcw.org/your_industry/retail/safety_health_news_and_facts/behavior_based.cfm

FIXING THE WORKPLACE, NOT THE WORKER; A WORKERS' GUIDE TO ACCIDENT PREVENTION:

http://www.msuwc.org/fixwork.html

CAW-TCA CANADA: