April 2, 2015 – The U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has cited USPS again for hazards throughout the mail center.
Employer name: United States Postal Service
Investigation site: 1720 Market Street, St. Louis, Missouri
Date investigation initiated and what prompted inspection: On Jan.13, 2015, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration initiated an inspection of a United States Postal Service mail processing site after receiving a complaint alleging unsafe working conditions at the facility.
Investigation findings: Investigators found blocked portable fire extinguishers, alarm systems and electrical equipment such as circuit breaker boxes and transformers throughout the ground floor of the mail center. OSHA issued two repeated safety violations.
“These hazards found throughout the mail center are completely unacceptable. The threat of fire inside this structure exists and set procedures to safeguard this equipment must be continuously monitored and enforced,” said Bill McDonald, OSHA’s area director in St. Louis. “Employers that are cited for so many safety violations repeatedly demonstrate a lack of commitment to employee safety and health.”
OSHA previously cited the same facility for these violations in 2014. OSHA issues repeated violations when an employer has been previously cited for the same or a similar violation in the past five years.
This plant is one of the dirtiest and unsafe places I have been in. Management talks a good game but the truth is moving mail before safety has always been the practice. Numbers is what matters. Management also keeps moving more mail volume into the plant knowing we are busting at the seams. Every lane is obstructed to the point it is unsafe to drive a tugger or forklift down. Gaps form 1767 is a joke and u will receive retaliation if u keep submitting them. All machines have a recommendation of floor space prior to install by headquarters and the machines we have are squeezed into space not recommended. Don’t blame the employees for management creating a condition that leaves employees no other chooses. We have mixed empty equipment stacked in every available spot in can be put. Management needs to accept its obligation and make available space to put the mail and remove all empty equipment out of the building. Do your job and make our bearable
Ignore any violations, drag the investigations out, punish any worker that can be blamed, then give big bonuses to all of management involved! then see if the carriers have made all their scans.
Shocked! Shocked I am to hear that fire extinguishers are blocked in a Postal facility.
At any moment, somewhere in the USPS there is a hamper sitting in front of a building support which holds a fire extinguisher. At dispatch time, there are probably more than one hamper, somewhere in the USPS blocking a fire extinguisher. It is like the building columns are magnetic and attract the metal frame of the hamper some how. Worse, at least every 10 years of so there will be hamper blocking an exit door, or worse, sitting in a aisle way.
When Mankind is no more, when there is not even the faint whimper of the last soul clinging hopelessly to a precipice, there will be a hamper sitting in an empty former USPS facility somewhere, blocking a fire extinguisher. When the last cockroach dies of old age, there will be that hamper, sitting there, blocking that fire extinguisher.
Say it ain’t so, Joe! Someone convince me it ain’t so!
oh oh the imbecility that is the us postal circus demands a bonus for violating safety codes…….it is the only place that I know that the turds float to the top. in the real world the plant mismanager would be fired, not demoted, not moved into a closet, but fired out the door.
I see these violations everyday in St. Louis. The Plant Manager and Lead Maintenance Manager should be fired because they are both worthless!!! The plant is absolutely filthy and the bathrooms smell like a fish boat. Horrible working conditions.
Statement from management: “We are committed to the health and well being of all our employees and will work vigorously to ensure all OSHA demands are kept and maintained. A full investigation into the repeat violations is underway.”
Translation: “We’ll find out who finked on us again, make that sonofabitch pay for embarrassing us again, and try to discipline or fire them for safety violations. Supervisors and managers will be given raises and ordered to be absolute assholes. We’ll make that whistleblower wish to hell they’d kept their mouth shut.”
The management in the St. Louis Area and Washington are pathetic. No doubt L’Infant Plaza knows all about the violations, and they did nothing to force St. Louis to be in compliance. I must wonder: with such blatant OSHA violations, especially the fire danger, couldn’t the unions sue the USPS? What does the Postal Service think will happen if some office like the Market Street office has a horrible fire and people are either killed or severely injured? They would be out millions in reparations and lawsuits. Have they no ability to see even one day into the future? Obviously not.
This is a Postal Service way, no accountability at all. That kind of culture is embedded in Postal Service for so long. USPS is promoting and defending that kind of management.
the only time safety matters in the USPS,is when you get hurt,or you damage one of their vehicles.your comment is as right as rain!
I’ll bet the stupid employee(s) that push equipment to positions that block access to these items have been told time and again to not do this. Sure, blame the supervisors or manageers, but it is your workfloor busddy who keeps doing this, knowing it is dangerous, but delighting in management being brought to bear for this. If this bozo would be fired,the cry from the workrom floor would be deafening, instead of recognizing the remioval of a dangerous individual.
The Plant Manager, the Maintenance manager and the supervisors will be promoted because that is the Postal Way!
isn’t that the truth
Give management a raise, fire the employee’s that have caused
the violations. Lets do things the Postal Way.
Hey Rich, your showing your bias is showing, to make a comment like that you amplify your lack of knowledge of conditions on the ground floor of this MPO, having been built in some thing like 1935. There is no room to put anything, anywhere. To be clear, LCTS, FSMs, Dock, Express, acceptance unit, and many more. Moron…