"The Unions' final offer is the most reasonable."  These are the closing words of Presidential Emergency Board 245.  PEB 245 was the LIRR effort at a do-over.

This outcome should be no surprise since the unions accepted wholly the recommendations of PEB 244 while the LIRR came to PEB 245 with an approach that prompted the new board to state, "The lack of notice and bargaining on substantial issues in the Carrier's final offer is of significant concern."

 Translated, this means the railroad tried to pull a fast one, throwing out four years of efforts and inserting new issues and terms into the negotiations.

Why the quick cash could leave you poorer in the end.

Your accident seems straight forward. You think you know your injury. You’re relatively confident you won’t need more medical treatment. You want to make up for your lost wages and pain and suffering, as quickly as possible. The railroad claim agent has said, "Give me a chance to settle with you before you get a lawyer."

In this blog we’ll look at why giving the railroad a chance to quickly settle your claim could leave you poorer in the end.

Setting aside the factors you do know, like how much you lost in wages, let’s take a look at the factors that you don’t know and how they can lead to a premature decision to settle with the railroad. Here are three things you don’t know, and how they could hurt you, if you rush to settle with the job.

Lost wages are an objective cornerstone of any claim resolution. If you’re trying to figure out the value of your case there are other factors to consider also, like the severity of your injury or how many years you have before retirement. Click HERE for more. But the starting place for every injury claim is this: How much did I lose in wages?

The concept of the calculation is straight forward. But the mathematics can get confusing. Let me break it down:

If you’ve been hurt on the railroad your first question is probably, do I have a case? Once you decide the answer is yes, almost assuredly, the next question is how much is my back injury claim worth? How much is my finger injury worth? How much is my knee injury case worth?

They’re important questions, because you want to make sure that the value of what you could recover from a settlement or trial is worth your time and sharing a portion of any recovery on legal fees.

There isn’t a calculator where you can enter an equation like:

Shoulder injury x 2 surgeries x 4 months off the job = Y dollars  

But you can get some idea of the worth of your claim by looking at several factors that we’ll take a look at in this post.

Those mundane but endless black tanker cars rumbling through cities and suburbs alike are cloaking a volatile offender: crude oil.

In this post we'll explore the transport of the dangerous fuel behind some recent hazmat spills and how it affects railroad worker safety.

This month an executive from the Ohio Oil and Natural Gas Association was quoted in an Ohio paper saying that the oil shipped through towns and cities all over the US is “ very volatile” and “basically liquified natural gas."

The official went onto say, “It is still classified as crude oil, even thought it is a lot closer to gasoline.”  

This is true for Bakken crude, coming out of the Bakken Oil shale in North Dakota, which regulators have concluded is more flammable than regular crude.

Technically classified as crude oil, and thus handled according to a certain set of federal safety guidelines overseen by Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, crude by rail (CBR) has picked up speed. For example in eastern Ohio alone, CBR shipments are up over 23%. But with tanker car derailments, like last year's accident in Alabama, getting more attention, public concern is starting to rise as well.

According to published reports, Charlie Davis is a FRSA whistleblower, and he may not even know it.  

NBC News and The Bergen Record are reporting that Mr. Davis went for a block operator job when he was bumped from his clerk's position, but instead of a job, he received an ultimatum -- go to rehab, or face termination.

Why? Because he tested positive for marijuana, albeit legally.  According to the law, he has 180 days to let OSHA know he was slighted by NJ Transit for following his treating doctor's treatment plan – taking medical marijuana for end stage renal disease.  The test result was no surprise, considering Mr. Davis told the railroad ahead of time about his prescription.

Three weeks after his 30th birthday, my client started working for the railroad as a temporary employee in the track department. He had previously worked for the county as a tree climber and for Poland Spring delivering water.

Six months later, on his first day as a permanent employee, my client, whom I'll call "John", was pulling pin spikes in the tunnels using a claw bar and a half washer, a technique created by the railroad. It was a tough spike, and he and his partner did what they had been trained to do, muscle it out.  But the spike head was corroded, and the heat-treated washer popped through in an instant.

Less than half a second later, John was on his knees clutching his right eye. In the ambulance and at the hospital, John was told they did not expect to save the vision in that eye.

After the accident, John learned the railroad had a hydraulic spike puller which could have been used in lieu of the manual technique.  

At the hospital he learned he had a ruptured globe. When the washer hit John’s eye, it sliced it open from 12 o’clock to 3 o’clock, which led to five surgeries, 29 weeks lost work and a net loss wage loss of $27,000.

Am I covered by FELA or workers’ comp?

I get that question all time and the answer is: Railroad workers aren’t covered by workers’ compensation and here’s why you should be glad.

Last week three new clients told me that they wish they were covered by worker’s compensation instead of FELA. When I asked each of them why, the answer was, “I’d get paid faster and probably just as much.” I had to tell they were wrong. Since the questions about FELA vs workers comp come up so frequently, and because the workers are so misinformed by the company, I figured it was worth writing about here.

The good news is that though railroad workers don’t get workers comp, FELA offers better coverage 90% of the time.

Last week President Obama signed an Executive Order concerning how the Long Island Railroad and unions resolve disagreements. It was nice to see the issue get a little press, but reading an article about it over weekend reminded me that most people have no idea what is really at stake.

In the wake of the death a Metro-North worker, the Federal Government has finally confirmed the cause of Metro-North's drastic fall from grace - performance at any cost, even human life.  

Just four days after James Romansoff, an 8 year member of the MNRR 3rd Rail department was killed, the Federal Railroad Administration found that the railroad prioritized on-time performance over everything else, including safety. Mr. Romansoff was part of a crew restoring power to tracks that had been closed for weekend maintenance when he was hit by a train traveling on the Harlem Line from Grand Central Terminal to Poughkeepsie. He was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. The report did not even include the details of this most recent death.

In this post I'll offer my perspective as someone who has worked closely with Metro-North workers for more than 15 years and has seen the railroad put efficiency above safety, time and again.