Danny Wilkins, senior manager-Track Maintenance, Engineering, was fatally injured April 11 in McNeil, Arkansas.
It deeply affected me to hear someone so close to my home was ki-led in a workplace accident. Accidents like this are avoidable, and are avoided by having a robust safety culture in place. All your i's must be dotted and all your t's crossed. Recently, Jim Vena spoke at the JP Morgan 2024 Industrials Conference. Widely interpreting as having been a rebuttal to FRA chairman Amit Bose, Vena touted the fact that no fatal injuries occurred in 2023 at Union Pacific.
The opening slide Vena showed at the J.P. Morgan conference cited a statistic about UP’s recent safety record: no work-related deaths in 2023.
“Union Pacific as well as the entire industry has made significant progress over the years,” Vena told conference attendees. The railroad ended 2023 “with good momentum,” he said, citing last year’s zero deaths.
Vena made this remark on March 13, less than a month later, Danny unfortunately lost his life.
I think it's sad when the CEO of a Fortune 100 company brags that nobody died last year. I think the expectation that you'll survive a day at work is the bare minimum, and to tout that nobody died last year as proof of a robust safety program is extremely tone deaf.
With the passing of Danny, it's easy to see that 2023 was a fluke, and not proof of any real improvement in safety.