With just about 500,000 employers, the United States Postal Service is one of the country’s largest employers, but many workers say they’re not receiving the training or supplies they need to deal safely with the coronavirus. They fear becoming carriers of another kind — catching and unwittingly spreading the virus.
“The management isn’t giving us gloves. They’re not providing hand sanitizer, and there’s no place on the street for us to wash our hands every so often,” says Beth, a letter carrier in the Midwest, who has a lot of big apartment buildings on her route. (Beth isn’t her real name. She fears that if she complains, she’ll be disciplined and could even lose her job.)
Beth says the instructions she and her co-workers are getting — wash your hands and if you’re sick, don’t come to work — aren’t good enough.
“In the Postal Service, basically if you call in like more than three days in a row, you get a letter of warning,” Beth says. She fears that unofficial policy could encourage sick workers to come in and spread the virus.
There are also scores of threads with hundreds of similar comments in postal worker groups on Facebook and reddit. One user posted: “Anybody else’s station not providing gloves?? We tell our management we need gloves ordered they laugh.” Another responded: “We can’t even get rubber bands.”