Skilled and alert operators prevent an unknown number of injuries and fatalities on New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) subway tracks each year. Yet in 2012, dozens of people died and scores of others suffered non-fatal injuries on MTA’s tracks. The workers who operate those trains decided to do something about it. They launched a campaign to influence MTA officials to improve track safety.

"We understood that the MTA felt that the high rate of passengers struck by trains—around 150 per year and the approximately 55 deaths—was just part of the price of doing business or collateral damage,” says Kevin Harrington, vice president for rapid transit operations at Transport Workers (TWU) Local 100. “So we instituted this campaign based on train operators’ realizations that passenger deaths on the tracks were often avoided when trains, for whatever reason, entered the station at a slower rate of speed. We asked our train operators to enter the stations slower in the hope this would prevent deaths, and it has."

TWU’s campaign included production of a hip-hop video called "Stand Back." Noah Rodriguez, a train operator and member of Local 100, composed and performed the song. TWU’s Mary C. Matthews directed the video, which raises awareness about passenger safety and lets the public know about simple steps straphangers can take to make sure they are safe. Station agents, track workers and other members of the union joined in the production.

The video wasn’t formally promoted, but "it just kind of took off like wildfire," Rodriguez says. The New York Daily News called the video "an impressive bit of work" and "catchy." The video has received more than 10,000 views, and the song has appeared in Mass Appeal magazine and on numerous blogs and has played on CBS radio and other New York radio stations.

Rodriguez has worked on other safety campaigns for TWU, including designing some of the fliers aimed at raising public awareness about rider safety.

This is an excerpt from AFL-CIO's @Work website. Read the rest of the feature here.