ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, September 22, 1996 TAG: 9609200012
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS STAFF WRITER
TWO fatal train accidents, both in 1974, punctuated the importance of safety for Norfolk Southern locomotive engineer Frank Sherman.
The first occurred that summer when liquefied petroleum gas tank-cars exploded in the Decatur, Ill., railyard, causing seven deaths and $90 million in damage. Sherman, a road engineer on the Decatur-to-Chicago run for NS' predecessor, Norfolk and Western Railway, was there the night it happened.
The second accident, whic h occurred nine days before Christmas, affected Sherman more personally.
It was at a highway rail crossing outside Decatur. A man in a pickup truck was headed down a snowy hill toward the crossing, and it became clear to Sherman that the driver couldn't stop.
"He kept sliding in the snow," Sherman recalled. ``We both realized it was going to happen. Just before I hit him he looked up at me, as if it say, `Isn't there something you can do?'''
The truck driver who was killed in the collision had two children, 7 and 9, the same ages as Sherman's own kids. "Christmas morning was just as mess for me," he said.
In the years since, Sherman has become a disciple of railroad safety. He volunteers his time as a speaker for Operation Lifesaver, a railroad industry program aimed at improving rail-crossing safety, and has served on a worker-run safety committee for NS' Roanoke Terminal, where he has been a yard engineer since 1981.
Safety-aware employees like Sherman helped NS earn its seventh-straight gold E.H. Harriman Memorial Safety Award in May. The award program, formerly run by the Harriman family, is now administered by a private institute in memory of Edward H. Harriman, an American railroad pioneer.
The award is given annually to the major railroad judged to be the nation's safest. CSX Transportation of Richmond was the runner-up for the award for the sixth straight year.
NS won this year's Harriman because of its employee injury rate of 1.51 injuries for every 200,000 hours worked in 1995. For NS' 24,000 employees, that amounted to about three injuries - anything that required medical treatment beyond first aid - every two days. The nation's major railroads as a whole, by comparison, averaged 4.23 injuries per 200,000 hours worked last year.
NS' longtime employees will tell you that safety was not always a major issue for the railroad.
"I was skeptical when they said upper management was concerned about safety," recalled David Jones, a 29-year veteran of NS' Roanoke locomotive shops and chairman of the Sheet Metal Workers Local No.52.
"When I came to work for the railroad, I didn't think safety was a top priority, but I do believe it is now," Jones said.
Walter Eubanks, who has worked for Norfolk Southern and its predecessor Norfolk and Western for 32 years, said NS' attitude toward safety is definitely better than in the past. He also is general chairman of the section of the United Transportation Union in Roanoke that represents brakemen,
"Used to, it wasn't anything for a division to have 50 injuries a year," Eubanks said. But now, he said, 10 injuries a year in a division - an operating region of the railroad that can vary in size and extend across state lines - is considered extreme.
NS took a hard look at its safety program in the late 1980s that led to major changes in the way the company approaches safety issues and to a steady improvement in its safety record.
In October 1988, NS hired the DuPont Co.'s safety services division to make a two-year evaluation of the railroad's safety program. DuPont was chosen because of its own enviable safety record - a rate of reportable injuries of about 0.6 per 200,000 hours worked.
On DuPont's recommendation, NS upper management put more emphasis on working safely and turned over its safety effort to the front-line workers to run, said Jon Manetta, an NS vice president.
Before DuPont, he recalled, NS had safety rules - just as it has now - but safety committees were run by division managers with only limited employee participation.
The safety program "is only successful if employees take ownership of it," he said.
Emphasizing safety, Manetta said, is not only good for employee morale but is also good for business. NS has won awards from many customers that use the railroad to haul their goods, Dow Chemical and BP Chemicals among them, for the safe handling of cargo.
Manetta said he couldn't put a dollar figure on the value of its safety program in terms of insurance savings, productivity gains or employee and customer good will. But he agreed the program brings financial rewards, even to NS' customers who get better service from a safe railroad.
When he accepted the Harriman award for Norfolk Southern in May, company Chairman David Goode warned that NS and other railroads need to continue their efforts to improve safety or risk new government regulation.
NS is on track to win an eighth straight Harriman medal this year, Manetta said. The company has set a goal of 1.3 reportable injuries per 200,000 hours worked for 1996, and through five months was performing at a 1.22 rate, he said.
At NS' Roanoke locomotive shops, the workers have already bought the frame and set aside the wall space for their next copy of a Harriman certificate, Jones said. NS' performance relative to other railroads has become a matter of pride, he said. "The better you do, the better you want to do."
This year the locomotive shops have had two minor injuries, a scald and a cut finger, but the shops' 155 workers aren't happy with that because they strive for no injuries, said Tommy Snead, who has worked for nearly 30 years in the shops and is a member of the safety committee. The most common injuries suffered by NS workers are hurt backs, followed by grasping injuries involving the hand and arm and foot, leg and ankle injuries.
The locomotive shops' enormous size impresses visitors. But so, too, does their cleanliness and orderliness, considering they are repair garages for giant diesel locomotives. There is no oil, grease or trash on the floor. There are no tools, hoses, parts or junk lying around for workers to trip over or run into.
Every day before they start work, employees in the shops hold safety meetings; if there's been an injury, they discuss the details of what happened. Each day, workers get an accident report for the entire railroad. After the daily meetings, workers do exercises aimed at preventing strains and sprains, before they go to work.
Having cleaned up their workplace, the workers have turned their attention to their own behavior. The actions of workers, themselves, Snead said, lead to more than 90 percent of all accidents.
Workers conduct safety audits of each other's work area. They watch how they work and point out potential safety problems. Chairmen of local safety committees serve on the systemwide safety committee and during the year will spend an entire week looking for potential safety problems somewhere on NS' system, which covers 20 states and the Canadian province of Ontario.
Each day, workers are responsible for policing their own work area for potential problems before they begin work, Jones said. Both he and Snead said any unsafe situation that's found is promptly repaired or roped off.
Years ago, management would sometimes let unsafe conditions go for days or weeks before fixing them, they said.
Locomotive engineer Sherman said two things make the company's safety program work: education and commitment.
Workers can talk to each other now about making their jobs safer without getting into arguments, he said. "We like ideas," he said. "Ideas are the birthplace of safety, really. We take ideas and make them into policy.''
Not everyone sings the praises of Norfolk Southern's safety record. Top officials of some of the country's largest rail unions - notably those that represent train crewmen and track maintenance workers - have charged that NS has built its safety record by intimidating workers into not reporting accidents with injuries.
"NS has taken the most hard-nosed position, using the threat of discipline to intimidate people" in order to win awards, said James Brunkenhoefer, legislative director for the United Transportation Union in Washington. He also accused NS, as well as other railroads, of telling doctors how to treat injured railroad workers so their injuries wouldn't have to be reported to the Federal Railroad Administration.
The railroads brought a new FRA rule on the reporting injuries on themselves this year, he said.
The rule, which takes effect Jan. 1, requires railroads to adopt internal controls to ensure accurate reporting of accidents, occupational illnesses, injuries and fatalities. It also requires a statement of railroads' policy to eliminate intimidation or harassment of workers designed to prevent them from reporting injuries.
NS' Manetta disputes Brunkenhoefer's charges.
The company makes it clear to its supervisors and employees they are to report accidents and injuries and to get injuries treated no matter how minor, Manetta said. Maybe 30 out of 1,000 injuries will result in formal investigations, but those are undertaken so the company can find out what happened and make sure it doesn't happen again, he said.
Eubanks, the UTU general chairman in Roanoke, said in years past supervisors had hassled workers over injuries, but since he resumed his current union post on May 1 last year, he hasn't had any reports of intimidation from his members related to accident reporting.
Top management appears to want workers to obey rules so they avoid injuries, Eubanks said. He noted that the rule book has been changed to slow down operations to prevent injuries.
For instance, in the past a train crewman could step off a train while it was traveling as fast as 15 mph. Now, employees are forbidden to get off a train unless its moving no faster than 2 mph and, if the weather is bad, the train has to be stopped, he said.
Eubanks credits the Federal Employers Liability Act with forcing the railroads to put more emphasis on safety. "It's the reason they've improved safety, and it's been effective," he said.
The FELA, a 1908 law, applies to rail workers in place of state workers' compensation laws for the general work force. But unlike workers' compensation, FELA allows railroad workers to bring lawsuits against their employers for negligence related to on-the-job injuries.
In the 10 years, NS employees have brought 512 FELA cases against the railroad in Roanoke Circuit Court alone. As a result of suits like those, the railroads have called for Congress to repeal FELA, saying it has resulted in friendly juries providing an unjust bonanza for workers and their lawyers.
For whatever motive, the railroad industry in general and Norfolk Southern in particular have made large advances on the safety front in recent years.
"It's not been an easy road," engineer Sherman said. "It's been a bumpy road now and then. It's something you have to stay after."
LENGTH: Long : 193 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: 1. ERIC BRADY STAFf Roanoke yard engineer Frank Shermanby CNBis a railroad safety disciple. color
2. David Jones (left in photo) and Tommy Snead lead the fight
against injuries in NS' Roanoke shops. color
3. chart - Norfolk Southern Safety STAFF KEYWORDS: MGR