Union Pacific Railroad employees achieved the best first half of the year safety performance in company history. For the period January 1 through June 30, Union Pacific's employee reportable injury rate was 1.31, a nearly 10 percent improvement over the previous company best 1.45 reportable rate for the first six months of 2009. Union Pacific's employee injury rate improved 50 percent from 2001 to 2009.

A company's reportable injury rate is calculated using the number of lost workday injuries per 200,000 worker hours, or per 100 employees working in a full year.

"Our approach is that all injuries can be prevented," said Bob Grimaila, Union Pacific vice president - Safety, Security and Environment.  "Great teamwork combined with employees embracing best practices and looking out for one another are critical to each person's individual safety."

Many factors account for Union Pacific's safety performance, including:

• Implementing job safety analyses, where each task is broken down into its component parts to identify the best way to perform each job. This leads to standardized work processes that are incorporated into training and coaching.
• Evaluating new ideas that challenge the status quo to improve work rules.
• Committing to the company's Total Safety Culture, an employee-owned process that empowers employees. The voluntary process focuses on training, observations and feedback.
• Developing proactive safety improvement efforts that evaluate close calls to better predict the potential for accidents.
• Establishing risk mitigation and assessment processes.
• Communicating with fellow employees about safety best practices as well as at-risk behaviors.
• Dedicating $40 million in 2009 to enhance workplace training. 

"We believe a zero accident rate is achievable because in every accident there is an opportunity to prevent it," Grimaila said. ""We want everyone to go home from work in as good or better condition than when they arrived."