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Local 689 of the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) represents employees of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA or Metro). Last month, Lindsey Williams (Advocacy Director of the National Whistleblowers Center) and I spoke to Local 689's Executive Board.  You can follow this link to my report of that meeting.

Now, ATU Local 689 has distributed an article about our meeting to all its members through its newsletter. This is the October/November 2010 issue, pages 10-11. You can download those two pages here (PDF file of 1.3 MB). Or, you can get the full newsletter (12 pages, 10 MB), from ATU Local 689's webpage.

The ATU Local 689 newsletter was particularly interested in my assertion that the National Transit System Security Act (NTSSA) of 2007, 6 USC §1142, protects public transit employees when they speak to the media about safety concerns. I should add here that the protection for media disclosures is not absolute, but requires a balancing of the reasonableness of the employee's actions in light of any foreseeable adverse consequences of such disclosures.  For example, if an employee were to raise a concern about security procedures, and revealed sensitive information that could be used to evade legitimate security protections, a court might find that the disclosure is not protected.  However, if the disclosure is a good faith attempt to apply public pressure or government action to improve safety, then that should be protected.

ATU Local 689's Chief Safety Officer, Anthony Garland, told the newsletter that WMATA management still prohibits employees from speaking to the media about safety, fraud or mismanagement. He adds, "The Authority's policy needs to be addressed by the union. An employee's federally protected right to speak to the media or any entity investigating safety, an accident, fraud, etc. must be respected by the Authority." I agree.

The ATU Local 689 newsletter raises a concern that WMATA management have failed to fully implement the recommendations of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). "WMATA has merely made moderate attempts at implementing measures to appease the Board of Directors and local media." To the extent that WMATA still restricts protected activities by employees, and attempts to channel them through a chain of command, I agree again. Local 689 is calling on WMATA to revise its whistleblower policy so it is consistent with federal law, and then train its supervisors about the workers' rights to raise safety concerns.

It would be good if area media recognized that it was in their interests and in the public interest, if they would join in the call for a clear WMATA policy protecting all manner of disclosures about safety, waste, fraud and mismanagement. The media could help by publicizing the protections of NTSSA so that everyone in the community, including WMATA employees, would be aware of their rights to raise their concerns publicly.

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Today Lindsey Williams and I spoke with the Executive Board of Local 689, Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU).Local 689 represents employees of Washington DC's Metro system. Lindsey is the Advocacy Director of the National Whistleblowers Center (NWC). We spoke about the National Transit System Security Act (NTSSA) of 2007, 6 USC §1142.

I have been looking forward to this opportunity for a long time. For too long, I have read local media stories about how Metro employees were too afraid of retaliation to raise concerns about safety. This can't be right, I thought.  There is a new law designed specifically to protect transit workers from retaliation.  It was a law that came out of a concern for the role that safe public transit plays in our national security.  Congress passed it as part of enacting the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission.

You can read the FAQ I prepared on NTSSA, together with my collection of web links, newspaper stories and blog posts. Everyone on the Board signed up for the NWC's Action Alerts. In our discussion, we noticed that NTSSA could be the sole remedy for transit workers who are fired during their probationary period for refusing to drive in unsafe conditions. Also, union grievances can be faster than the Department of Labor process. Still, it was obvious to all of us that workers' advocates need to know about all the tools in the belt to decide which ones might be best for any particular case. We agreed to continue talking about steward training to make sure that all Metro employees learn about their NTSSA rights when they face retaliation. I thank Jackie Jeter, President of Local 689, for the invitation to speak.

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In June 2009, a Metrorail accident near Ft. Totten in Washington, DC, killed nine people. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) issued a report this summer that found Metro lacked a "safety culture." Now an internal Metro report finds the same problem. Katherine Shaver wrote about the report for the Washington Post. While 60 percent of Metro employees witnessed a safety concern, 30 percent of them did not report it. Shaver says that fear of retaliation is cited as a reason.  Her article fails to mention the two federal laws that grant public transit employees legal protection when they raise safety concerns. These laws are the Federal Rail Safety Act (FRSA), 49 U.S.C. § 20109, and the National Transit System Security Act (NTSSA). Both are part of Public Law 110-53, the 9/11 Commission Act passed in 2007. See § 1413 (NTSSA) and § 1521 (FRSA). I have written about these laws before here, here, here and here. Later this month, I have an appointment to speak to officers of Local 689 of the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) about these legal protections. I feel like Glinda, the Good Witch of the North (from the Wizard of Oz), telling transit workers that they have had these legal protections for years.  They just need someone to tell them about these protections so they can feel more confident that they are protected from retaliation. If it won't be the Metro Board, Metro management, or the Washington Post, then it will be me.

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