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Use of the Railroad Retirement Board Occupational Disability Program across the Rail Industry

GAO-10-351R Published: Feb 04, 2010. Publicly Released: Mar 08, 2010.
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We recently reported that Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) workers applied for U.S. Railroad Retirement Board (RRB) occupational disability benefits at a rate 12 times higher than workers from the other commuter railroads covered under the Railroad Retirement Act. RRB provides an occupational disability benefit to eligible workers whose physical or mental impairments prevent them from performing their specific railroad jobs. For example, a railroad engineer who cannot frequently climb, bend, or reach, as required by the job, may be found occupationally disabled. On March 18, 2009, Congress asked us to conduct a systematic review of RRB's occupational disability program. Per our discussions following the release of our September 2009 report on LIRR and commuter rail workers' experience with the program, Congress refined its request. It told us that its primary interest was quickly determining whether unusual patterns in claims like those exhibited at LIRR exist elsewhere across the rail industry, including class I, II, and III railroads. This letter formally conveys the information we provided during a briefing with Congress on December 2, 2009. In summary, we found that no other rail employers in our analysis had the consistently high rates of occupational disability awards that existed at LIRR from calendar years 2004 to 2007, the most current data available at the time of our review.

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ClaimsCommuter railCommuter transportationData collectionDisability benefitsDisability insuranceEligibility criteriaEmployees with disabilitiesEmployment of the disabledLabor statisticsOccupational health standardsPeople with disabilitiesProgram evaluationRail (Railroads)Railroad employeesRailroad industryWorkers compensation