Is management at fault?

Milwaukee, WI – On June 20, Eugene Gates, Jr. collapsed from a heat stress-related illness and died while delivering on his route in Dallas, Texas. Gates was a member of the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC) Branch 132 whose president, Kimetra Lewis, said that Gates “was at the point where he could retire.” He had joined the USPS in November 1987 and had worked for the company for over 30 years.

Gates would have benefited from receiving the Heat Illness Prevention Program (HIPP) training carriers were supposed to receive this spring, but instead U.S. Postal Service management falsified training records for carriers all over the country, forging documents which claimed carriers received the HIPP training in early April. If you ask carriers, most of them have never heard about the training. Heat illness is the leading cause of death for carriers and these actions show a clear lack of empathy from postal management towards its employees.

The USPS has recently been pushing for a speedup of its employees as the company shifts to conducting route evaluations based on scanner data where employees’ every move is monitored on a computer program. The company seeks to cut costs and add extra deliveries to carriers routes by forcing this scanner data to support their interests.

Local managers have been instructed to convince employees that the volume on their routes is historically low. They're going against the national agreement with NALC by implementing “mandatory hour office times” where carriers are to organize their mail and parcels and load their trucks in under an hour. If employees go over this estimate they are being harassed and written up. Management has also been implementing “pivot” strategies where carriers are being threatened with discipline unless they finish their routes an hour early to then deliver an hour of work on another route. This is before the burden of mandatory overtime most carriers see daily, with some being forced to work 12 hours a day for six days a week.

Corey Walton, NALC Branch 4 steward and host of the informative podcast “From A to Arbitration”, has stated plans to file a national grievance for falsifying carrier training records and plans to release an episode in honor Eugene Gates, Jr. and inform listeners how to combat management harassment for unrealistic productivity levels going forward.

All of these strategies recently implemented together likely contributed to Gates’ death, as the shop floor has become hostile and stressful. Carriers are being harassed to meet these dangerous new standards set forth by management with a clear lack of regard for carrier safety. If things don’t change soon management will have more blood on their hands.

#MilwaukeeWI #NationalAssociationOfLetterCarriers