Both Canadian railways, CN and CP, often tout their safety records, but in reality I think they could do a lot more to make it a safe workplace. Much of that burden is borne by those employees. As you point out, many employees who think the rail industry is a good place to work find out that maybe it's not the best place they want to work in.
Again, railways are driven by their operating ratios and meeting their quarterly numbers. That means “if we can save some money, let's do it”, and it often means cutting the workforce to achieve that quickly. That's very short-sighted, and it has consequences going forward. One of them is the poor performance of the railway, but also the safety of the employees.