Each day, when 14-year Brakeman Taylor Morel straps on his steel-toed boots, raises his tinted safety glasses and plugs in hearing protection, he brings experience, accountability and sharp focus to the job.
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As a result, Morel’s peers elected him as one of the Gulf Coast Service Unit’s Total Safety Culture (TSC) facilitators. Morel provides safety insights to a portion of Louisiana’s TE&Y employees, stretching from Beaumont East to Avondale Yard in Union Pacific’s Southern Region.
Since hiring on as a brakeman in 2007, Morel said safety in the yard became second nature, but it was time for a new challenge.
“I felt like I wasn’t really doing as much as I could in regard to safety,” Morel said. “When I saw what the facilitators were doing, touching on that safety component at every single terminal from Beaumont to Avondale, I realized the reach was more than just my own little world.”
During his term as facilitator, Morel hopes to celebrate positive peer habits and use them as teaching moments to underscore the “why” behind certain railroad procedures and processes. By putting a process in the context of safety and the reason behind it, he believes employees can better understand the importance of doing tasks the right way every time.