CSX Rebuked on Whistleblower Firings

CSX Transportation Inc. has been ordered to pay a total of $453,510 to a pair of railroad workers who were wrongfully terminated for exercising their federally protected rights to report workplace safety concerns.
The total includes $248,856 in back wages plus compound daily interest, $100,000 for emotional distress and $100,000 for punitive damages for the two workers. CSX must also pay one of the workers $4,654 for the health insurance premiums paid after their termination.
The company must also reinstate the workers.
A US Labor Department Administrative Law judge’s decision follows an OSHA whistleblower investigation of CSX Transportation’s November 2017 actions after the workers reported a blue flag on the tracks at a Waycross, Georgia, railyard, signaling they could not move their train safely.
In response, the company removed them from the assignment and later fired them.
OSHA determined CSX’s response violated federal protections for workers raising safety issues.
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Universal Recycling Technologies was found in April to have failed to implement adequate engineering controls and didn’t keep surfaces as free as practicable from lead and cadmium accumulations, despite being cited for the same violations in April 2023.
OSHA cited the Janesville, Wisconsin company with two repeat and six serious violations and one other-than-serious violation and proposed $202,820 in penalties, for continuing to expose employees to unsafe levels of lead and cadmium while they dismantled cathode ray tubes from older TVs.
“Chronic overexposures to these toxic metals may cause severe damage to blood-forming, nervous, urinary and reproductive systems,” said OSHA Area Director Chad Greenwood in Madison, Wisconsin.
Based in Janesville, Universal Recycling Technologies LLC also operates facilities in Dover, New Hampshire; Clackamas, Oregon; and Fort Worth, Texas.
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