[Editor’s Note – We are glad to share this important report on work conditions during peak season from the New Labor Organizing Committee-affiliated shop organization New Day at USPS. To reach out to them, email NewDayatUSPS@proton.me]
Mail Handler Assistant Injured in Charlotte
The November edition of New Day at USPS reported on the tragic deaths of Russell Scruggs Jr. and Nick Acker, two postal workers who were killed in separate, preventable incidents tied directly to USPS’s neglect of worker safety in its push to speed up holiday-season production. Two weeks after the November edition was published, New Day at USPS received a report of an injury at the Charlotte Local Processing Center.
A mail handler assistant with less than a month on the job was hit by a forklift on the loading dock. They were hospitalized but luckily not seriously injured. Despite the incident, management immediately demanded that work continue as usual. In response to the injury, a Charlotte postal worker told New Day at USPS, “They don’t care about us or whether we make it home, just that we get our mail out.”
This was entirely preventable. A week before the injury, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) received reports that Charlotte postal workers lacked first aid equipment and that forklift operators ignored safety rules. OSHA is a federal agency, like USPS, and rather than protecting postal workers and preventing a potentially fatal injury, it protected USPS. Instead of investigating itself, OSHA allowed USPS to conduct it’s own investigation.
This injury was not the result of an individual driver’s negligence, but rather the outcome of USPS management’s expectations that equipment operators handle their machines and the containers they haul in unsafe ways in order to maximize the speed at which mail is moved in and out of the building, an issue detailed further in the report below from Oklahoma City.
The Charlotte Local Processing Center is a new building that opened less than a year ago and processes more mail than nearly any other distribution center in the Southeast, making it a key part of USPS’s Delivering for America plan. However, in a clear example of how Delivering for America serves to boost profits at the expense of postal workers, the facility has seen a dramatic surge in injuries this year compared to the previous distribution center in the city.
Peak Season Testimony From Oklahoma City
In Oklahoma City, as we entered peak season, high turnover left many workers inexperienced, poorly trained, and unclear on safe practices.
An example of this is the expectations for the PIT equipment operators to handle their machines or the various containers they haul in an unsafe manner. Management will routinely ask the operators to haul loads that far exceed the maximum capacity with equipment that is not suitable for the task. The “2 Prongs” or pallet jacks are regularly called over by supervisors who will attach trains of a dozen postcons full of packages or letters and send them to navigate docks that are full of mail and people in an attempt to satisfy dispatch schedules, putting the workers both on and off the equipment at great risk. One worker has gone on the record saying, “I am often asked to bring out mail to the dock and sometimes I can’t get to the dock door because of all the mail out there. There are other operators, truck drivers, and expeditors out there on the dock, and it gets really dangerous. I’m still pretty new and haven’t gotten through my 90-day probation since being converted, so I’m nervous about refusing to do what they ask, and I don’t know who to go to about it.”
Another issue we have encountered here is a broad feeling of exhaustion and frustration. The high rate of work across all units is made worse by the long stretches endured by workers without breaks and mandatory overtime called each night, with only one day off a week throughout this peak period. One worker has told us, “The workers all seem tired and grumpy; the supervisors are on edge and have often been rude. Everyone is burnt out, I think.”
Exhausted and overworked workers make more mistakes and are more likely to get hurt or hurt others, especially when working on or around heavy equipment. The pressure put on them by supervisors makes all of this worse. Here in OKC, the workforce is young and new to the industry for the most part, so exploitation is easier to get away with. The supervisors only care about the amount of mail they move, not about our safety or well-being.
The Need for Postal Worker Unity
Due to the fact that USPS is legally obligated to deliver mail to every address in the U.S., it often acts as a dump for deliveries that private companies such as FedEx, UPS, and Amazon don’t want to service due to their low margins or unprofitability. Due to this, USPS desperately looks to find ways to profit; disregarding employee safety and pushing them to the brink of exhaustion is just one way it can squeeze out an extra few dollars. This pressure intensifies during peak season, when the post office aims to maximize profits during its busiest period.
OSHA’s dismissal of safety concerns in Charlotte and the lack of response from postal unions to recent deaths and injuries show that existing institutions fail to protect postal workers. The only way to stop this assault is for all USPS employees, across crafts, to unite in a single, rank-and-file-led all-postal workers union. Only then can USPS workers harness their collective power through a strike to end the unsafe and exhausting conditions imposed on them.
