OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — After Terrence Hersey had a stroke on the way home from his railroad job in 2015, he underwent months of therapy to learn how to put words together in sentences and learn to walk again. He had to relearn how to get in and out of a car and how to dress himself before his doctors eventually cleared him to return to work with no restrictions.
That recommendation wasn’t good enough for Union Pacific. The railroad decided after reviewing Hersey’s records — but without a doctor’s examination — that he was unfit for his job overseeing inspections of stationary railcars in Chicago because of the risk he would become incapacitated.