Summer 2000
Volume 107 - No. 2

Guest Comment

Zero Tolerance

by The Honorable Jolene M. Molitoris

Administrator, Federal Railroad Administration

Everyone wants to go home healthy and whole to his or her family every day. The number one priority at the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) is safety. Zero tolerance is our goal. We believe that zero injuries and zero deaths in the railroad industry is a goal that we can realize together -- together with you, our BLE safety partners. Over the last seven and a half years a new culture has been created in railroading through a partnership among FRA, rail labor and management. This alliance has resulted in life saving safety improvements.

BLE President Ed Dubroski has proven that leadership matters. President Dubroski has been a driving force in the effort to forge a strong safety partnership. He is committed to finding safety problems and solving them. With the help of the BLE's strong and steadfast support, the Safety Assurance and Compliance Program -- known as SACP -- has gained widespread acceptance throughout the railroad industry. The contributions of the BLE have been crucial to the success of SACP. It is our belief that, with BLE support through SACP, safety will increase in the future and our goal of zero deaths, accidents and injuries will become a reality.

SACP is the main tool used to grow safety in this partnership. SACP is the people who know railroading best, the men and women who sit behind the throttle and work at the ballast level, working together with FRA and railroad management to find answers to safety problems. SACP is nothing short of revolutionary. SACP is a way to go beyond just using rules to increase safety. History has proven that only using rules will never get us to zero.

SACP is FRA's response to the Clinton/Gore Administration's mandate to create a customer-focused culture -- a culture where prevention is priority and a root-cause systems answer approach has resulted in the safest seven years in the railroad industry's history. Since its creation in 1995, SACP partnership achievements include:

Employee empowerment

• The UP, BNSF, and CSX have agreed to and implemented policies which allow an employee to refuse to perform an unsafe act without fear of discipline.

Management Accountability Policy

• The UP managers are now accountable to their employees. Union officers can call for a review of a manager's behavior.

Training and Counseling

• Every major railroad is working to transform long-standing company discipline policies. Training and counseling are stressed as alternatives to punitive actions, greatly reducing the number of disciplines that are assessed and the length of discipline levels.

Improvements in Crew Utilization

• Although the Supreme Court ruled that "limbo time" was not considered in calculating total hours on duty under the Hours of Service Act, through SACP efforts, the UP stepped back from that decision and instituted a policy calling for crews to reach their terminal within 12 hours. Compliance has been dramatic and recent statistics indicate that in some areas, more than 70 percent of the train crews reach tie-up points within 12 hours.

Fatigue and Work-Rest Agreements

• Great strides are being made in fatigue reduction. Building on pilot programs initiated in the North American Rail Alertness Partnership (NARAP), an FRA sponsored fatigue awareness and prevention organization, many railroads have started fatigue reduction programs. BNSF and the UP established napping policies to allow engine crews to nap while on duty under certain circumstances, an action for which any employee would have been dismissed in the past.
• BLE is a leader in the area of fatigue reduction and has successfully negotiated many agreements based on NARAP principles. As of March 1, there were 117 work/rest agreements with operating employees on the UP and BNSF has started over 60 programs allowing train and engine crews assigned days off.

Crew Calling Program

• A crew calling program not allowing for engineers and conductors with less than one year of experience to be matched on the same crew has been developed by some railroads.

Revised Discipline Policy

• BLE and other labor organizations have built upon the SACP partnerships and provided input in developing new discipline policies to decrease the amount of discipline issued while increasing the use of coaching, counseling, education and other alternative discipline methods. Every major railroad, including CSX, NS, UP and BNSF, has made major revisions to discipline policies over the past three years.

Train Orders and Bulletins

• Through SACP efforts, train crews no longer receive orders and bulletins for an entire division when printing out orders and bulletins for a trip. Crews now receive only orders and bulletins for the subdivision(s) over which they will operate, decreasing the chance for errors. All timetables and special instructions have also been made available to crews.

FRA complaints are down because of you. By working together through SACP, we are solving safety problems more quickly than possible under the traditional complaint process.

I congratulate the BLE on its effort to help put an end to the single largest cause of employee fatalities -- accidents that occur during yard and switching operations. Working together with experts from other labor organizations, the railroad industry, and FRA on the Switching Operations Fatality Analysis (SOFA) Working Group, the BLE helped develop life saving recommendations that, when followed, would put an end to these tragedies. Work/rest agreements covering days on and off, napping, sleep disorders, and education are now being expedited throughout the industry.

During the first six months of SOFA, yard accidents decreased 20% and overall train accidents decreased 14%. Sadly, three fatal switching deaths have occurred in just the past four weeks. We need your help to spread the SOFA safety message and put an end to these senseless deaths.

SOFA will be a success. Why do I believe this? Because I know that when we work together, everything is possible. Look at some of our successes -- policies dealing with discipline such as CSXT's Individual Development and Personal Accountability policy and BNSF's Policy for Employee Performance Accountability; CSXT's SENSE mentoring program for new and inexperienced engineers; and BNSF's Safety Incident Analysis Process. These efforts reflect the commitment and hard work of BLE members in promoting a new safety culture within the railroad industry. Together, we continue our work on initiatives to prevent harassment and intimidation, improved crew utilization, employee empowerment, improved training, and programs to combat fatigue.

Working together for the common cause of safety, our industry's record has shown dramatic improvements. Since 1993, total railroad-related fatalities have decreased by 27%; train accident fatalities have decreased by 87%; employee fatalities have decreased by 34%; and highway-rail crossing fatalities have decreased by 36%.

These improvements are at the expense of personal sacrifice and hardship -- time away from family and friends, but the benefits are significant. BLE is an organization that deeply cares for the safety of its members and all the other employees in our industry. Leading by example, BLE stands by its motto "Since 1863, A Tradition of Forward Thinking."

Editor's Note

JOLENE MOLITORIS was appointed Administrator of the FRA by President Clinton in April 1993 and was confirmed by the Senate later that year. She is the first female administrator of the FRA in its 34-year history. Under Molitoris' leadership, the FRA began its transformation from a traditional regulatory agency into a result- and customer-focused organization. The FRA safety program adopted a systems approach, identifying root causes for safety hazards and system-wide solutions that have become "best practices" in the industry. For the first time, labor, management and other constituents are at the table at the beginning of the rulemaking process, resulting in the most productive years for rulemaking in FRA's history. More importantly, the period 1993-1999 was the safest seven year period in U.S. railroading history.

Administrator Molitoris holds a B.A. from Catholic University of America and a M.A. from Case Western Reserve University.

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