Fellow AA employee

[eolesen]

Being injured on property and being injured on the job can sometimes be two different things. If he had clocked out at the time of the injury, it's possible that under Texas law, Workman's Comp does not apply, and that he's left only with Short Term / Long Term disability.

 

[DFWFSC]

You raise two important issues. Hoods on rainsuits restrict peripheral vision and the newer vehicles are hard to hear. A bad combination. I bought my own sou'wester hat to give me a little more peripheral vision. Yes, I get clever comments about Gorton's.

Does your mention of cell phone while driving refer to this accident?

Would a safety vest have helped him?

No,I don't think he was on his cell phone or ipod. A safety vest would not have made a difference.

The rules at DFW are never really enforced because management knows it will hamper or slow the operation down. But if you screw up they will nail you for it, but they won't enforce them.

The DFW ramp is a very dangerous place, way too many vechicles of various speeds. You have electric tugs going about 5 mph and fuel or Skychefs trucks going about 40-50 mph. There are probably people driving on the ramp who don't even have a drivers license.

The cell phone issue is something that AA is limited on what it can enforce. There have been issues in the past where a FSC had a child get sick or hurt at school and it took over 1 hour for somebody to get the message to the fsc,who could be anywhere on the ramp between 4 diffrent terminals.

 

[AMFAMAN]

The DFW ramp is a very dangerous place, way too many vechicles of various speeds. You have electric tugs going about 5 mph and fuel or Skychefs trucks going about 40-50 mph. There are probably people driving on the ramp who don't even have a drivers license.

You forgot the 60mph fuel trucks. But you are right, if they enforced the rules, they could never run as many flights. I wouldn't want to know what the place looked like if everyone followed the road from terminal to terminal instead of taking the direct route.

 

[Garfield1966]

Who designs airports? Is it a design by committee where everyone gets a say and it gets screwed up go do the people who actually work them/pilots/ramp/maint... etc get a say?

 

[eolesen]

In the case of DFW, it was designed for a pre-deregulation point to point operation, and not hub/spoke.

DFWFSC, are you certain about the ipod/cell phone? I've heard from a couple different sources that "personal electronics" were a contributing distraction.

 

[NewHampshire Black Bears]

Garfield(The Movie),

Part of the Dynamics of MANAGEMENT, is ENFORCEMENT.

AA(like many other companys), create rules and regs., but fail(at times)...(for whatever reason)..to ENFORCE their own R's + R's !!!!!!

Even in a state like TEX-A$$(with it's shitty, PRO COMPANY work comp laws), all a good work comp. lawyer would have to show, is AA still FAILING to "ENFORCE" their own R+R's !!

The rest(legally) as they say, "is history" !!

To the MORE Important point......Lets ALL hope that the severly Injured individual, can reclaim as much of his life, as possible !!!!!!!!

NH/BB's

 

[eolesen]

Even in a state like TEX-A$$(with it's shitty, PRO COMPANY work comp laws), all a good work comp. lawyer would have to show, is AA still FAILING to "ENFORCE" their own R+R's !!

For liability, you're correct, but WC is a different set of circumstances and rules.

And it's not just TX law at play here, Bears. Insurance companies have lobbied pretty hard to get language in place across the country which more or less defines WC as applying only to injuries sustained in the line of duty, with perhaps exceptions being given for things like firemen who also serve as volunteer firemen.

I think you'd agree that getting hurt in the company parking lot doesn't qualify as an IOD, so whether or not he clocked out becomes pretty important to the discussion.

If he was off-duty, even though he was out on the AOA at the time of his injury, the insurance company is going to fight covering this as a workers comp claim.

The reverse side of the coin are a couple cases from NY and MA, where employees were either killed or injured in drunk driving accidents while still on the clock thanks to buddy-punching. The fact that they were still on the clock cause them to be classified as IOD and eligible for workers comp...

 

[Wretched Wrench]

If he was off-duty, even though he was out on the AOA at the time of his injury, the insurance company is going to fight covering this as a workers comp claim.

AA might be better off if this is a WC claim. If it is not a WC claim, he could sue under tort law, with AA having none of the employer-friendly built in protections and limits of WC.

The issues would be, "Was AA negligent?", and "Did that negligence cause the injuries?" And "How much should he be compensated?"

 

[FWAAA]

Regardless of your employer's enforcement (or nonenforcement, as the case may be) of the policies, rules and regulations, wouldn't it make sense for the individual workers to act defensively when working on the ramp? Don't adults have some responsibility to keep themselves safe?

Sorta like my parents taught me many years ago about driving: Better to be alive and unhurt than to leave your heirs a great lawsuit.

Being in the right don't mean much if you're dead (or paralyzed) because a pushback tug ran over you.

Either the tug driver screwed up or the poor soul was standing where he shouldn't have been. How terribly tragic.

Complaining about how the company doesn't enforce its own safety rules sounds like my fourth graders and their classmates, not like adults who work in a potentially deadly workplace.

If the company did actively enforce the safety rules, we'd see thread after thread containing complaints of chicken-$#!) write-ups of the poor downtrodden working man by the supervisors, wouldn't we?

 

[Wretched Wrench]

Complaining about how the company doesn't enforce its own safety rules sounds like my fourth graders and their classmates, not like adults who work in a potentially deadly workplace.

AS the company often tells us, "Safety Is Everybody's Business?" Most ramp accidents would not have happened if AA rules were enforced.

However, safety costs money. The question then becomes, how much money and inconvenience is AA willing to pay for how much safety?

If the company did actively enforce the safety rules, we'd see thread after thread containing complaints of chicken-$#!) write-ups of the poor downtrodden working man by the supervisors, wouldn't we?

To some degree, yes. As a humorous side note, I am reminded of a rule that drivers on the ramp could not wear sunglasses after sunset. The sunglass-wearers actually made a claim of racial prejudice out of it. I still see night time drivers wearing sunglasses with ipods in their ears. Or a phone. One headlight is out and the other is aimed skyward. The ramp is downright scary by day and positively terrifying by night.

From what I have seen, DFW is even scarier.

 

[Garfield1966]

I just wanted to say thankyou to all of those who helped. The message sent out as of yesterday said that it is a fund raiser for a fellow AA employee. I guess one person can still make a difference.

 

[Bob Owens]

What a jury finds is irrelevant to what may or may not have happened. According to a friend of mine who works the ramp, the employee in question was leaving work and instead of going though the areas normally taken, he chose to walk across the ramp area with out his reflective gear on and it is my understanding in violation of safety policies set forth to prevent such an accident. This accounting of the situation seems to support what was stated in the thread linked above.

A court found AA guilty of air turbulence in the injury of Speilbergs sister IIRC. Does that mean AA is responsible for clear air turbulence as well? Juries seem to routinely find against corporations. That does not mean the jury is right.

And Judges usually rule for the corporations.Thank God for Jury by Peers.

He should sue, what does he have to lose? If they leave him without any insurance or workmans comp it only makes his case stronger for a bigger settlement.

 

[eolesen]

Most ramp accidents would not have happened if AA rules were enforced.

And just about all ramp accidents wouldn't happen if AA rules were followed...

Partnership for Safety was originally supposed to address some of this. And, not to throw brickbats, but the TWU gets some of the blame for PFS failing in it's primary mission, which was to try and change employee attitudes towards workplace safety.

I understand it, the local wanted no part of actually doing safety observations for statistical purposes. If anything else, I would have expected the union to embrace an opportunity to try and make the place a safer place to work. Instead, they decided it was too risky, and that their observations would be used by management to take punative actions against the individuals who broke safety regs.

So now you're left with a bunch of CSM's and other management folks left to try and monitor the very problems they haven't been able to fix at DFW for the past 20 years...

This accident was avoidable. Everyone, including management and the TWU, knew it is dangerous to walk between A and C.

Unfortunately, that same everyone assumed it was someone else's job to fix, and now this guy is permanently disabled, and will probably never return to work as a FSC.

 

[Bob Owens]

For liability, you're correct, but WC is a different set of circumstances and rules.

And it's not just TX law at play here, Bears. Insurance companies have lobbied pretty hard to get language in place across the country which more or less defines WC as applying only to injuries sustained in the line of duty, with perhaps exceptions being given for things like firemen who also serve as volunteer firemen.

I think you'd agree that getting hurt in the company parking lot doesn't qualify as an IOD, so whether or not he clocked out becomes pretty important to the discussion.

If he was off-duty, even though he was out on the AOA at the time of his injury, the insurance company is going to fight covering this as a workers comp claim.

The reverse side of the coin are a couple cases from NY and MA, where employees were either killed or injured in drunk driving accidents while still on the clock thanks to buddy-punching. The fact that they were still on the clock cause them to be classified as IOD and eligible for workers comp...

I dont think they have it cut so precisely to "punch in and punch out time", so if you were hurt in the parking lot I would go with IOD, why not? As far as the company is conmcerned if you are on company property you are bound by their regs. In fact even if I was driving to or from work and was hurt I would go for the workers comp, its work related. Stress related illnesses and carpel tunnel syndrome have been attribted as work related injuries and classified under workers comp cases too despite the fact that you cant nail it down to the precise momont the injury was sustained.

The fact is that workers comp usually limits a persons ability to seek redress for injuries sustained while working for their employer, take away the workers comp and it opens the way for more lawsuits against the company.

 

[eolesen]

Carpal tunnel and other repetitive stress injuries have their own subsection in the WC regs, as does long term exposure to carcinogins and toxins. But driving to/from work? Please....