OMAHA, Nebraska (AP) — Union Pacific regularly hires private investigators to review employee medical leave applications and fires anyone who happens to leave home while on vacation, according to a lawsuit against Union Pacific Railroad. I’m here.
Lawyers who filed the first such case in Texas last month said the practice is another example of how railroads maintain safety. pressure on the crew Keep calling 24/7 while threatening to take the unpaid leave they are supposed to take under the Family Medical Leave Act.
Now that the Texas lawsuit is proceeding in court, attorney Nick Thompson plans to investigate the claims of several other UP employees who contacted him with similar concerns and will seek additional He said it could lead to litigation.
“Ultimately, this will have the effect Union Pacific wants: It will scare people away from using FMLA,” Thompson said.
Omaha, Nebraska-based Union Pacific says it did nothing wrong when it fired Deron Rutledge. work. Spokeswoman Robynn Tysver said UP is following all the rules for providing leave under the Family Medical Leave Act.
“If an eligible employee or a member of their family has a serious medical condition that qualifies them under the law, we encourage the eligible employee to use the FMLA,” Tysver said. increase. “We expect our employees to use this approved leave appropriately. If an employee is found to be abusing her FMLA, Union Her Pacific will take action as permitted by law. may be subject to disciplinary action.”
This whole situation might be less of an issue if employees paid for sick leave, but railroads have only started addressing that concern in recent months. Agreement Some unions provide four days of paid sick leave. But so far, most conductors and all engineers who work on locomotives (more than half of all railroad workers) still don’t get sick. And the crew of those trains The most demanding and unpredictable schedule.
“I don’t think it makes sense to call 24/7, including holidays, and not give sick leave,” Thompson said.
The industry has long had a shortage of paid sick leave. important issue helped bring the railroad to the brink of a strike last fall parliament intervened prevent strikes, get workers to accept transaction.
Railroad companies would be unlikely to enforce medical leave rules this aggressively if they weren’t so short of staff.Due to the shortage, the railroad was granted hardships of the past year To handle all shipments that many companies want to deliver.
Major freight railways as a whole have cut jobs by nearly a third over the past six years. simplified their business Because they rely on fewer, longer trains, they don’t require many employees or locomotives to run them. The railroad company has been actively recruiting since service problems peaked last spring, but is struggling to find all the workers it needs.
“Hiring more people costs money,” said Thompson, whose Wisconsin-based company handles many complaints from railroad employees nationwide.
Several other major freight railroads, including CSX and Norfolk Southern, face other lawsuits over how they administer the federal Family Medical Leave Act.
In the Texas case, Rutledge spent more than 11 years at Union Pacific in various jobs, working as a conductor until he was laid off last year. According to his lawsuit, Rutledge had to take eight months off work after his 2017 back injury to rehab, but after returning to work, his back condition worsened. I had to take additional time off from time to time.
However, the railroad company fired him after a private investigator saw him drive and briefly walk to a grocery store and gas station near his home in Fresno, Texas. He said his boss wouldn’t listen to him when he tried to explain that even though he was fine enough to run errands, he wasn’t in the mood to help drive the train.
“Just because you’re on FMLA doesn’t mean you have to lie in bed all day. The fact that you can’t work a 12-hour shift is the difference between being able to do other things,” Thompson said. I was.
Union Pacific is one of the largest railroad companies in the United States, operating trains in 23 western states.
To Thompson, this lawsuit and recent strings of attention grabbing digression It’s the same symptoms that employees and their lawyers have been describing for years.
“Railway companies put profit above all else — over safety and employee well-being — and we are seeing the results,” he said.
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This article has been updated to correct that most conductors did not take paid sick leave instead of taking it.
