by improving adherence to safe work practices.  Metro has been paying out money to help keep the larger cost of an injury from rising.  Metro has two safety recognition programs, awarding workers for going 200 days accident-free and for being “champions of safety.”  In the past fiscal year, Metro’s transportation safety worker safety programs awarded 815 cash awards, ranging from about $50 to $2,000.  It has awarded 617 workers this budget year.  The DC train, bus and transit system has also been identifying workers who can perform other work even while injured, assigning them to “light duty” tasks.

But Amalgamated Transit Union Local 689 President Jackie Jeter said there aren’t enough of those jobs to go around.  Getting an injured worker back “on the job” in a light or modified duty position is often a “win-win” situation, as it returns to the employer an experienced, trusted and loyal employee, and gets the employee back on the payroll, with the attendant deductions for retirement, insurance, Social Security Disability, etc. Read more