> You need Unions. Blue collar workers care about safety and can pressure execs into doing the safe thing when the incentives aren't there higher up.

Yep. This happens all the time in other unionized industries. Manager: "Do [unsafe thing that is against policy / the law, or even that is simply physically impossible]". Worker: "Yeeeeah, I'll be looping my union rep into this conversation". Manager: "On second thought, never mind".

I'd guess the problem's that the railroad workers' union is toothless.