CALGARY — Canadian Pacific employees will pause to honor workers who have perished or have been injured in the workplace at 11 a.m. local time on Monday, April 28, the designated International Day of Mourning.
“Each year we remember those employees who have lost their lives or suffered injury in occupational incidents in an effort to continuously strengthen our focus on workplace safety,” said Executive Vice-President and Chief Operating Officer Kathryn McQuade. “Safety is our number one priority.”
Trains across Canadian Pacific’s 13,500-mile North American rail network, locomotives in CP yards and terminals, and crane operators in intermodal terminals will stop at safe locations for one minute of silence followed by one lone whistle as a further salute. CP employees working on the road will safely park their vehicles and observe one minute of silence at the same time. Shop workers and office employees, too, will observe a minute of silence.
“As a result of dedicated joint union-management Occupational Health and Safety teams across our rail network, Canadian Pacific has one of the best on-the-job safety records in the North American rail industry,” added McQuade.
Canadian Pacific’s personal injury frequency for 2008 is currently about 1.4 injuries per 200,000 employee hours, comparing favorably to a North American industry average of approximately 1.6 injuries per 200,000 employee hours according to Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) statistics, the railroad said. Personal injuries have declined 76 percent in the past decade and 24% in the first quarter of 2008 in comparison to the first quarter of 2007.
Measured by train incidents, CP has been North America’s safest large railway in six of the last seven years, according to the railroad.
On March 31, Canadian Pacific became the second large railroad to join the Confidential Close Call Reporting Pilot Project, a FRA-funded study of workplace incidents that could have resulted in an accident, but did not. The pilot project involves the FRA, Canadian Pacific, and employees represented by the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET) and United Transportation Union (UTU) in Portage and Milwaukee, Wisc., as well as certain BLET and UTU represented employees based in St. Paul, Minn.
— PRNewswire-FirstCall
