As union leaders met with federal officials in Washington to discuss railroad safety, one union leader said workers assigned to the cleanup of the Norfolk Southern train that derailed Feb. 3 in East Palestine, Ohio, are falling ill.
Leaders of 12 unions met with Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Amit Bose, administrator of the Federal Railroad Administration, in D.C. on Wednesday to talk about the derailment, its aftermath and needed safety improvements, according to CNBC.
“My hope is the stakeholders in this industry can work towards the same goals related to safety when transporting hazardous materials by rail,” said Mike Baldwin, president of the Brotherhood of Railroad Signalmen.
“Today’s meeting is an opportunity for labor to share what our members are seeing and dealing with day to day,” Baldwin said. “The railroaders labor represents are the employees who make it safe and they must have the tools to do so.”
The meeting came as a letter from Jonathon Long, general chairman of the American Rail System Federation of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, was sent to Buttigieg, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine and other officials.
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In the letter, dated Wednesday, Long said Norfolk Southern workers “reported that they continue to experience migraines and nausea, days after the derailment, and they all suspect that they were willingly exposed to these chemicals at the direction of [Norfolk Southern].”
He said one worker begged to be moved off the site due to his symptoms, but that request never received a reply.
The letter also alleged that workers at the site were not provided with proper personal protective equipment.
“I have received reports that [Norfolk Southern] neither offered nor provided these workers with appropriate personal protective equipment, such as respirators that are designed to permit safely working around vinyl chloride, eye protection and protective clothing such as chemical retrain suits,” Long wrote.
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“This lack of concern for the workers’ safety and well-being is, again, a basic tenet of NS’s cost-cutting business model,” he…
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