OMAHA, Neb.– Union Pacific executives undermined U.S. government efforts to assess rail safety in the wake of several high-profile industry derailments by coaching workers on how to respond and suggesting they could be disciplined, say federal regulators.
The interference was so widespread across Union Pacific’s 23-state network that the Federal Railroad Administration had no choice but to suspend the company’s safety review, the agency’s chief safety officer, Karl Alexy, told Union Pacific executives last week in a letter that Labor groups posted online Tuesday.
The company indicated on Wednesday that the problem was limited to one department. The president told FRA in a response letter that Union Pacific “did not intend to influence or impede the review in any way.”
The agency launched safety reviews of all major U.S. railroads at the urging of congressional leaders after Norfolk Southern’s disastrous February 2023 derailment in eastern Ohio, and the Union Pacific episode could spur lawmakers to finally take action on stalled rail safety reforms.
“FRA discovered that numerous employees were coached to provide specific answers to FRA questions when approached for a safety culture interview,” Alexy wrote. “Reports of this coaching include the UPRR (Union Pacific Railway) system and railway vessels. FRA has also faced reluctance to participate in field interviews from employees who allege harassment or fear of retaliation.”
The head of the safety department of the nation’s largest railroad union, Jared Cassity, noted that the FRA is so small that it must rely on the railroads to police themselves and report safety problems.
“To think that a company as large as Union Pacific is willing to go to great lengths to intimidate and harass its employees into not being honest in their assessment of a company’s safety culture. That begs the question: what else are you covering up?” said Cassity, who works at the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers’ Transportation Division, also known as SMART-TD.
A spokeswoman for Union Pacific said the railroad believes regulators’ concerns relate to a message a manager sent to employees in his department across the line with a copy of the questions FRA wanted to ask to prepare them for an interview.
“The steps we took were intended to help, not hinder, and were taken to train and prepare our team for the assessment in an ethical and compliant manner,” Union Pacific President Beth Whited said Tuesday in a response letter to the FRA. “We apologize for any confusion those efforts caused.”
Last year, the FRA discovered a slew of defects in Union Pacific’s locomotives and railcars after sending in a team of inspectors, and the FRA is still working to determine what caused a railcar explosion at the vast railroad yard in the United States. western Nebraska.
Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, who co-sponsored the bipartisan rail safety bill after the East Palestine derailment, called Union Pacific’s interference “unacceptable.”
“Major railroads continue to fight efforts to improve safety,” Brown said. “We need much stronger tools to stop railroad drivers from putting their own profits and greed above basic safety.”
Brown vowed to soon fight for a Senate vote on the bill that would set standards for track detectors and inspections that would need to spot problems before they can combine with other changes to cause a derailment. The House of Representatives has yet to pass a rail safety bill because Republican leaders wanted to wait until after the National Transportation Safety Board’s final report on the East Palestine derailment, expected in late June.
Whited told the Federal Railroad Administration that Union Pacific plans to launch an internal safety review this month, as the agency suggested, because “our goal is to be the safest railroad in North America, a place we know we can still be.” can be achieved more quickly with the help of the FRA. ”
But Cassity said he doubts an internal investigation would be accurate because many Union Pacific employees are afraid to speak out about safety concerns. He said the prevailing attitude appears to be to “move the freight at any cost,” making another major derailment all the more likely.