Workers' Compensation: Bay Area Rapid Transit

Saturday, October 19, 2013

On Strike: BART train kills 2 workers near San Francisco

Safety is a concern even if a labor dispute leads to a strike. Workers' Compensation covers all work connected events if the arise out of the employment. This post is shared from CNN.org

An out-of-service Bay Area Rapid Transit train struck and killed two workers on a section of track northeast of San Francisco on Saturday afternoon, the transit authority said.

The employees were making track inspections near the Walnut Creek station, BART said in a statement. One was an employee and the other was a contractor.

The train was on a routine maintenance run with an experienced operator at the controls, but at the time of the incident, it was being run in automatic mode under computer control, BART said.

The victims had extensive experience working around moving trains, the transit authority said. The procedures involved in track maintenance require one employee to inspect the track and the other employee to act as a lookout for any oncoming traffic, it said.

BART's union workers are currently on strike over a variety of issues, including wages.

Following Saturday's deaths, one of the unions, Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1555, said it would not picket Sunday out of respect for the victims' families.

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