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Editor's Note: This in-depth behind-the-scenes look into the rail industry is important reading for every railroad worker. Most will recognize the stories, conditions, and behaviors described herein. For many of us, this is the article we have waited our entire railroad career to finally see in print. NOTE: If you are a railroad worker and have experienced a scenario similar to any of those described in the report, please do not hesitate to contact the authors. Apparently there will soon be a follow up to this article.

“Do Your Job.” How the Railroad Industry Intimidates Employees Into Putting Speed Before Safety

by Topher Sanders, Jessica Lussenhop, Dan Schwartz, Danelle Morton 

and Gabriel Sandoval - Nov. 15, 6 a.m. ES

Railroad companies have penalized workers for taking the time to make needed repairs and created a culture in which supervisors threaten and fire the very people hired to keep trains running safely. Regulators say they can’t stop this intimidation

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

BRADLEY HAYNES and his colleagues were the last chance Union Pacific had to stop an unsafe train from leaving one of its railyards. Skilled in spotting hidden dangers, the inspectors in Kansas City, Missouri, wrote up so-called “bad orders” to pull defective cars out of assembled trains and send them for repairs.

But on Sept. 18, 2019, the area’s director of maintenance, Andrew Letcher, scolded them for hampering the yard’s ability to move trains on time.

“We’re a transportation company, right? We get paid to move freight. We don’t get paid to work on cars,” he said. “The first thing that I’m getting questioned about right now, every day, is why we’re over 200 bad orders and what we’re doing to get them down. … If I was an inspector on a train,” he continued, “I would probably let some of that nitpicky shit go.”

Haynes knew that the yard’s productivity metrics were hurting and that the repairs he ordered had a direct impact on his job security. Just that day, he’d flagged a 40-pound GPS box that was hanging by a cable off the side of a car. He worried it could snap off and fall on a colleague’s head or go hurling into a driver’s windshield. His boss greenlighted the car to leave anyway.

Haynes had started carrying a digital recorder in case he ever needed to defend himself. It captured him asking Letcher what would happen if a defect they let go wound up killing someone....

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