Reaffirms Rules
Track Safety Unit Urges Inspections

By ARI PAUL

The New York City Transit and Transport Workers Union Local 100 joint track safety task force Dec. 4 released its final report making 63 recommendations to improve safety for Maintenance of Way workers and Train Operators.

HOWARD ROBERTS: 'Ground-breaking report.'

The task force reviewed NYC Transit's safety protocol and inspection reports on work sites for six months after two Track Workers, Daniel Boggs and Marvin Franklin, were killed on the job in April. The task force also reflected on the Boards of Inquiry reports released Aug. 2 on the two deaths that revealed, among other problems, that there was insufficient communication between Rapid Transit Operations and Maintenance of Way employees when major track work was being conducted. President Howard H. Roberts called the report "groundbreaking" and hailed the collaboration with Local 100.

'Substantive Change'

"This report represents a substantive change in the approach to safety at [NYC Transit]," Local 100 President Roger Toussaint said in a statement. "It offers concrete measures for making safety an integral part of our work. It shows that when management and labor decide to work together toward the same goal, real progress can be made, progress that just a few years earlier might have been regarded as unattainable."

The report recommended that NYC Transit's Department of Subways inspect emergency alarm boxes and emergency telephones more frequently. When Mr. Boggs was struck by a downtown-bound 3 train near the Columbus Circle station in Manhattan, his co-workers found that the nearest emergency alarm box was not working.

Many of the recommendations rehashed existing work safety rules and modifications NYC Transit made in the immediate aftermath of the fatalities.

"The Department of Subways must continue to require adjacent track flagging when the work area is not separated from an adjacent track by a physical barrier (wall or station platform) - a wide area is not a barrier," the report stated. "[It] must continue to require that the Rail Control Center obtain confirmation that everyone is off the track before a train is permitted to make a reverse move."

The task force also suggested that NYC Transit's Corporate Communications department produce a DVD on track safety for employees modeled after one for ConEdison workers.

In May, the Office of System Safety and Local 100 set up two joint work-inspection teams. In roughly 145 unannounced visits, the teams found between 1.13 and 2.46 "negative audit findings per audit each month," the report said.

In addition, the report said, "Many supervisors did not have a good comprehension of the flagging requirements," that "Flagging lights and insulated tools were not properly inspected before being used," and that "Job site illumination and housekeeping [were] inadequate."

The teams also found that in work sites, protective mats for the third rail were not being used as required.

Half Had Near-Miss

Appended to the task force's report last week were the findings of a voluntary call-in survey of transit workers this summer by the Global Strategy Group.

The firm stated that nearly half of the respondents said they have experienced a near-miss on the tracks, but that only 34 percent actually reported such incidents. When asked why they didn't, 35 percent of respondents said that if nobody was injured then there was no reason to report it and 26 percent believed that if they reported a near miss they would be disciplined.

The survey found that 25 percent of the respondents believed their "job is extremely or very safe" and that "the top factors that contribute to safety hazards are failure of trains to stop or slow down."

The survey had 756 participants. Of those, 114 were supervisors, 247 were Train Operators, 361 were Maintenance of Way Division workers and 34 were Rapid Transit Operation Flaggers.

Advise Continued Audits

The joint task force was comprised of three union representatives and five officials from NYC Transit. James Wincek and John Szurlej from the Office of System Safety served on the task force, as did Joseph Leader, Robert Hannigan and Tracy Bowdwin from the Department of Subways. The Local 100 representatives were Curtis Tate, the vice president of Rapid Transit Operations Division, Leroy Jardim and Susan O'Brien, who was replaced in October by Robin Gillespie.

The task force advised that the joint inspection teams continue to audit track work.

In a press conference last August about the Boards of Inquiry reports, Mssrs. Toussaint and Roberts agreed that in addition to improving work rules, NYC Transit needed to reform the organizational culture so that workers and supervisors would not compromise on safety. The two also serve on another track safety task force established by the State Legislature this summer with the State Transportation Commissioner. The state task force was a compromise solution when a Local 100-backed bill that would have established concrete safety regulations stalled in the State Senate.

"It is our goal to maintain the safest workplace possible," Mr. Roberts said in a statement last week, "even as our employees go about the job of maintaining a railroad that moves more than 5.2 million customers daily."