Teamsters rail Conference says rails not doing enough about security

February 14, 2001 (The Teamster Rail Conference sent the following letter to its membership): The Teamsters Rail Conference takes great interest in efforts by our nation's railroads to maintain and improve the industry's workplace security and safety - as well as workforce training and awareness - especially in light of heightened security threats and increased use of technology. As your representatives, we care deeply about your job, your employers' long-term security and viability, and employer accountability across the rail industry.

In 2004-2005, more than
4,000 members of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen and the
Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes Division completed our Safe
Rails/Secure America survey. That survey provided valuable insight into the day-to-day
realities of security preparedness on our nation’s railroads from the
perspective of front line workers. Those results were published in September
2005 in a report entitled, "High Alert: Workers Warn of Security Gaps on Nation’s
Railroads"

Five years later, we
called on you again with a new survey asking identical questions to determine if,
in the intervening five years, effective steps have been taken by the industry
to address the security gaps revealed in the 2005 report. To that end, members
of the BLET and the BMWED completed 7,280 surveys during 2008-09 evaluating
safety and security measures in place at the Class 1 carriers on any given
workday. The Teamsters Rail Conference has compiled those results in a new
report, "High Alert 2," that highlights our survey findings.

On April 15, 2010, we met
with the Association of American Railroads and security representatives from
seven Class 1 carriers (BNSF, CSX Transportation, Kansas City Southern, Norfolk
Southern, Canadian National Railroad, Canadian Pacific Railroad and Union
Pacific), and a representative from Amtrak to brief them on the results of our
High Alert 2 survey. Immediately thereafter, we provided copies of the report
to officials from the Federal Railroad Administration, the Transportation Security
Administration and key members of Congress. On June 10, 2010, we met with officials
from FRA and TSA to provide a briefing of our High Alert 2 report.

High Alert 2 reveals that
top U.S. rail carriers have failed to make significant progress toward closing
the security gaps that put at stake the safety of rail workers and communities
across the country. While the carriers have made some progress in several key
areas (such as the securing of remote control devices and the number of
employees trained on their role in the employer’s emergency action plans), the
overall results suggest that workers do not believe that the rail companies have
significantly improved the security of their operations.

Workers continue to
report an unacceptable level of vulnerability-even across survey areas that
show improvement. No one carrier emerged as a strong leader across the board
regarding rail security efforts. Each company both outperformed and
underperformed its peers in different areas, without many extreme variations from
the industry norm.