Criticism
While the awards were intended to encourage safe operating practices and safety enhancements, the awards have also occasionally been the source of some labor disputes. Part of the award criteria has been a count of the number of reported workplace injuries as tracked by the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA); this has led to disciplinary action and even dismissal for employees at some railroads. Several rail labor unions objected to the criteria, going so far as to picket the award ceremonies. Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes (BMWE) General Chairman Paul Beard created the "Harassment Award" as a satire of the Harriman Awards to raise awareness of management practices that bred intimidation and disciplinary actions against reporting accidents. In 1999 the FRA invited discussions with representatives of rail labor unions to discuss the problem.
Read more about this topic: E. H. Harriman Award
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“I consider criticism merely a preliminary excitement, a statement of things a writer has to clear up in his own head sometime or other, probably antecedent to writing; of no value unless it come to fruit in the created work later.”
—Ezra Pound (1885–1972)
“The critic lives at second hand. He writes about. The poem, the novel, or the play must be given to him; criticism exists by the grace of other men’s genius. By virtue of style, criticism can itself become literature. But usually this occurs only when the writer is acting as critic of his own work or as outrider to his own poetics, when the criticism of Coleridge is work in progress or that of T.S. Eliot propaganda.”
—George Steiner (b. 1929)
“As far as criticism is concerned, we don’t resent that unless it is absolutely biased, as it is in most cases.”
—John Vorster (1915–1983)