| CLEVELAND -- "The Federal Employers' Liability Act (FELA) provides the best protection for rail employees against workplace accidents and injuries and the United Transportation Union is not about to abandon FELA protections," said UTU International President Paul Thompson. "FELA is one of the most potent tools rail labor has to improve rail-industry safety."
Thompson said false rumors, believed being spread by one or more railroads, wrongly allege the UTU is prepared to sit down with railroad officials to discuss alternatives to FELA.
FELA is the federal law that permits injured railroad employees to sue negligent carriers to recover costs of rehabilitation and lost wages, as well as general damages for pain and suffering.
"When juries award damages under FELA, strong messages are sent to carriers that they cannot ignore workplace safety without paying an even greater price than if they corrected the unsafe workplace conditions to begin with," Thompson said.
"FELA was enacted by Congress almost a century ago, when railroaders routinely encountered horrific accidents in a highly dangerous workplace. Injured employees and their families, facing unemployment, unpaid medical bills and economic destruction, were left to the mercy of their relatives, friends and union brothers and sisters by railroad employers who, until enactment of FELA, could simply ignore them and safety in the workplace.
"The carriers falsely claim that placing railroad employees under plans similar to state/federal workers' compensation that covers most other industries is preferable to FELA," Thompson said. "What the carriers don't say is that there are few -- if any -- work environments in America more dangerous than railroads, and the loss of FELA would jeopardize the hard-fought safety gains that FELA injury awards have helped to secure."
Railroads have been telling Congress that employees in other industries suffer more injuries than railroad employees, but the carriers ignore the fact that those injures in other industries are mostly bruises, sprains and strains.
"When railroaders are injured in the workplace, the injury too often results in crushed and lost limbs and, too frequently, death," Thompson said. "FELA gives injured railroad employees powerful rights and the UTU is not prepared to abandon those important employee protections."
Thompson said members of Congress are being falsely told by carriers that the UTU is prepared to negotiate an end to FELA and that congressional hearings should be held to explore canceling the law and enacting something more to the carriers' liking.
"Carrier officials also are falsely telling other rail union presidents that the UTU is prepared to negotiate an end to FELA," Thompson said. "These are untrue rumors intended to drive a wedge between rail unions -- a divide and conquer strategy of the carriers that is not going to work.
"If there was anything out there that would protect our members as well as FELA, we would be talking about it; but there isn't, so we stand with all other rail unions in opposing the current carrier proposal to scrap FELA," Thompson said. "FELA is the best safety statute we've got to protect our members." | 
