From Amtrak THIS WEEK email dated 9/25/17:<br /><br />Amtrak is making important changes to its Drug and Alcohol Prevention program, as previously announced in May here. The company is reinforcing its efforts on protecting employee health through substance-abuse prevention.<br /><br />As part of these changes, Amtrak is ending the Operation RedBlock program at the end of the day on Sept. 30, 2017, and starting a new program on Oct. 1.<br /><br />Agreement employees will no longer be able to “mark-off” under the “Operation RedBlock” program rules starting on Oct. 1. However, Amtrak’s new program will maintain the ability for agreement employees to “mark-off” up to three times during their career due to drug- and alcohol-related issues that could impact their work and safety. The new program will also provide agreement employees who do mark-off with additional resources to get and stay healthy.<br /><br />Amtrak’s new program is called PIER, which stands for Prevention, Intervention, Education, Resources. A brief video that explains why we are moving to PIER can be seen here. We will be sharing more details about how the PIER program works next week.<br />