People get "fired" all the time on the the railroad. We call it getting run off. It's getting terminated that you have to worry about. The amount of rules we have to comply with is unreal. I have to carry a three ring binder that consists of our rule book. Then you have bulletins and notices for the area you operate in and system wide they put out quarterly that you have to print and comply with. Basically it's IMPOSSIBLE to work a full day without breaking some kind of rule no matter how hard you try and it's designed to be that way. We even have a rule that states you must know and comply with all rules at all times.
Anyway, whenever somebody derails or tears something up the company's solution is to send a "hit team" to refocus everyone on safety and rules compliance. But, everyone is too worried about where these guys are hiding and it does just the opposite. The hit team is a group of managers from other terminals that show up with the sole purpose to write people up for any kind of rule violation they can find. So when you get written up the way the railroads discipline people is to fire you for however many day depending on the severity of the rule violation you were written up for. It can vary anywhere from three days to a year. Some are worse than others, what may get you fired at one railroad may get you run off whereas if you worked for someone else they may just talk to you and tell you not to do it again as long as it's not and FRA violation. CSX just loves to fire people I guess. We've got at least 25 people I know of in our terminal that are fired right now.
The insurance I was talking about most of us have is to cover us if we get fired. That way you don't go broke. You pay a monthly premium based on the amount of coverage just like any other insurance and if you get fired you get payed a daily amount for whatever number of days you don't work. Some guys I know carry as much as $500/day. So whatever you're covered for, that's how much they'll pay you every day you're fired. Sorry for the novel but takes a lot to explain all that.