Is Postal Service Budget More Important Than Employees?

[img]583|left|||no_popup[/img]According to a reliable source, on Tuesday, Aug. 2, when the employees showed up for work at the U.S. Postal Service’s Los Angeles International Service Center, they were greeted by a note on the time clock instructing them to gather in the main conference room at 3:30.

After all employees assembled, along with military personnel and representatives from the Center for Disease Control, they were informed by the plant manager, a Mr. Holden, that they had been exposed to tuberculosis. They were told an employee had contracted the disease about a year earlier and they had just been informed by the CDC.

The source said Mr. Holden informed the employees that only “high risk” personnel would be tested. When asked why wasn’t everyone being tested, the manager indicated that the budget precluded them from doing so.

If workers had concerns, they should contact their private physicians and arrange to be tested. Thereafter, they tested all managers and a few of the employees considered high risk. The source also indicated the postal workers union presence was all but nonexistent. The source said:

“The local president, John Driver, and none of the local officers bothered to come to the meeting. Instead, the treasurer, Darryl Brown, came and did not even ask any questions or voice any concerns about the situation. Is this what our president and local think of us whereas we are not even important enough for them to be present to see about our safety and welfare regarding an employee being diagnosed with TB that we all may have come in contact with and may even have exposed our families to?”

Subsequently, it was found that the employee who caused the exposure died on July 8. Of 26 employees tested as of last week, 13 tested positive.

I Want To Know Why

Here are questions begging to be asked:

1. If 13 of the 26 employees tested positive, wouldn’t it be prudent to put budgetary concerns aside to protect the health of the employees, their family, friends and neighbors?

2. Since all of the employees at that facility were potentially exposed, , why do they have to incur the expense of going to their own physician? Isn’t that considered a job- related hazard? Isn’t it the postal service’s responsibility to protect the job-related threat to the health and safety of employees and their families?

3. Since all of the employees worked in one facility and the postal service has no idea how the employees came into contact with one another in commons areas, how did they determine who was high risk?

4. How does the postal service justify testing all of management and not the employees who are in much closer contact with one another?

5. Where’s OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration? Don’t they have a role in seeing to it that the postal service doesn’t give their budget priority over the welfare of their employees?

6. Where are the unions? Why aren’t they demanding every worker be tested?

The Fault Is Apathy

This is a prime example of the apathy of the American people that has allowed both the business community and our government to write off the poor and middle-class as expendable and secondary to profits.

We see it everywhere, including on the battlefield, with the endless wars that use poor and middle-class troops as cannon fodder to promote the interests of war profiteers and oil companies. The oil companies are rushing into Lybia today to divide up the spoils that poor and middle-class troops have died for while thinking they were defending the interests of our country.

The irony is, the children of the people who benefit most from the death of the poor and middle class troops, the rich, are no longer even expected to defend this country. The same is true of the 29 coal miners who died in West Virginia on April 5, 2010. Hubpages.com reported:

“29 Coal Miners Die in Coal Mining Explosion”

The Massey Energy Company of Montcoal, West Virginia, ignored violations and warnings that the Upper Big Branch Coal Mine, which they own, was not safe for coal miners to be working in.”

Weeks later, on April 20, 11 oil workers were killed in a horrific explosion on an oil rig run by British Petroleum. In the aftermath of the disaster The Daily Beast reported:

“A document obtained by The Daily Beast shows that BP, in a previous fatal disaster, increased worker risk to save money.”

Now we see the United States Postal Service all but ignoring the possibility that their employees could take a deadly disease home to their families, neighbors and friends and while employee unions stand by watching this unconscionable act of irresponsibility.

What more do we have to see to understand that it's time for American workers to stand up and retake control of their lives?

They need to wake up and realize their apathy is allowing them to be written off. They must use the political clout of their numbers to make themselves heard. It’s time for them to realize that they are knee-deep in a class war they’re losing badly.

If they are to survive, poor and middle-class workers must understand they never again will be secure in their jobs until they come together to ensure that their politicians, union officials, and managers are insecure in theirs.

Eric L. Wattree is a writer, poet and musician, born in Los Angeles. A columnist for the Los Angeles Sentinel, the Black Star News, a staff writer for Veterans Today, he is a contributing writer to Your Black World, the Huffington Post, ePluribus Media and other online sites and publications. He also is the author of “A Message From the Hood.”

Religious bigotry: It’s not that I hate everyone who doesn’t look, think, and act like me – it’s just that God does.