 | |
| Example of unsafe TRIMET bus |
|
Testimony to the TriMet
Board of Directors-12/14/11
Al M
Members of the TriMet Board
of Directors, I appear before you today because
I am concerned about what I
am hearing from our general manager and what I
see on the job as an
employee.
For months now Mr.
McFarlane has been talking about how much his safety
Initiative is improving the
operating conditions at TriMet; about changing
our culture and making
safety a value, and not a word.
He has talked about the
great deal of time and money put into 'retraining'
operators. But what I feel he hasn't addressed are the
structural problems
that can negate all of this
training.
I see TriMet employing
questionable ethics in its enforcement of procedures
and regulations. I
personally have been accused of doing things that I
honestly cannot believe
I've done.
And when managers request
us to see them and talk about our supposed
violations, the details are
kept secret until we are physically in the room
and the disciplinary
meeting has commenced. They are aware of
the incident
beforehand, yet withhold
the information from the operator.
I consider that
psychological torture, and completely unnecessary.
Once in the meeting, we are
forced to endure a reading of the charges.
Questioning the source of
the information is not
allowed. How are we to defend against a faceless
accuser?
I myself am a victim of
this sort of persecution and I sit before you today
in the hopes that you will
instruct Mr. McFarlane to reexamine the methods
employed when confronting
operators; unfair and unjust methods that most rational human beings
would realize create
emotional turmoil for the operator being accused.
Is it good management
practice to upset your operators then force them to spend the next hours
behind the wheel of a
TriMet bus?
Next I want to talk about
the unsafe operating condition of some of our
buses.
We have mirrors that are
too small, defrosters that don't always work and
seats that don't adjust, as
well as plenty of other safety issues, like
water leaking onto an
operators head while driving.
There is no safety without
safe equipment. TriMet has been
building rail lines across
the region, but I feel that the buses have been left to rot.
Personally I feel its a
matter of managment misconduct allowing the bus fleet to deteriorate
to such an unsafe level.
Lastly, but no less
important, is the issue of scheduling. TriMet's
scheduling department
desperately needs a culture change
Many runs result in the
operator frequently being late and getting
little-to-no recovery time.
One should not need advanced schooling to
understand that this
increases stress and chances of a crash or other
incident.
And if you lend someone
your car, and they are a foot shorter than you and
they adjust all the
controls to their specifications, would you just jump in
and drive down the road
without making any adjustments before proceeding?
Probably not, but that is
exactly what the scheduling department expects of
us. Just jump in the seat and go. Who cares if you can see out the mirrors
or steer with accuracy?
We need to begin driving
ASAP, or create a delay that causes us to get later
and later.
I submitted several
Requests for Safety Assessment regarding these issues
but was rejected. I was offered weak rationalizations that I
found
unjustifiable. It seems there is no arguing with the
managers here, and
that they always know
what's best.
The K+J safety analysis
made a very clear statement about scheduling and
safety, yet it appears Mr.
McFarlane has done nothing to have the scheduling
department come up with a
safety standard for schedules.
There should be a template
developed, and if a schedule does not meet that
basic standard of safety,
it should not be used operationally.
Overall, Mr. McFarlane
insists that he is changing the culture.
But it
seems to me that most of
the problems he talks about were not created by the
union or front-line
employees and I question whether they are being
addressed.
What we really need here is
a change in the management culture
No comments:
Post a Comment