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Mr. President: How About a Little of that Change We Can Believe in?
BENEATH THE SPIN • ERIC L. WATTREE
As a professional and former insider with a through understanding of the inner workings of the postal service, the doctor’s assessment of the working environment within the agency is so chilling that one can’t help but wonder how such corruption, employee abuse, and adminsitrative indifference have been allowed to exist in a United States government agency. Thus, I’m going to devote this week’s column to an excerpt of the doctor’s professional assessment, a man who is uniquely qualified to speak to what he calls the “toxic environment ” that postal workers are forced to endure on a daily basis.
At 600,000 strong, plus family, friends, and neighbors - and in an election year where incumbents are hanging on by their fingernails – postal employees are in the driver’s seat of a tank. Yet, they’re allowing themselves, and their families, to be robbed by a guy with a butter knife – and not just once outside a liquor store, but repeatedly in what is supposed to be the sanctity of their workplace. This has got to come to an end.
Why are so many union officials missing in action? Where are your congressional representatives? And President Obama, where are you?!!
On the morning of June 2, 2009, a city letter carrier went to work and reportedly fatally shot himself in the head in the locker room at a postal facility in Gastonia, North Carolina. The Gaston Gazette online news report stated that the “Gastonia Police are investigating an apparent suicide this morning at the post office. . . . One of the employees is inside dead from a gunshot wound.”
Prior to my retirement from the USPS, at a former district I worked for, there were three suicides within a two year period that I concluded were contributed to in significant part by how these employees were treated in the workplace. The third employee, a city letter carrier, fatally shot himself in a postal jeep and left a letter stating that he could no longer take the job. The night before he committed suicide he told his wife he did not know if he would be able to handle his job anymore. How do I know? His wife told me this one day after his suicide. He was one of the best employees in the office. The District Manager and I interviewed his coworkers after his death, and they stated he would urinate in a bottle while on delivery route for fear he would not meet an artificial deadline set by postal management. During the interviews, one of the postal supervisors told the District Manager and me that the day before the suicide she gave a letter to all the city letter carriers in the station, noting that any future over time used for their routes would be considered unacceptable performance. The suicide at the Gastonia postal facility was the second since December 2005.
Many people have asked: Why is there so much stress and workplace tragedies in the U.S. Postal Service? The answer to these questions is because the postal culture embraces and reflects core values that center on achieving bottom-line results with little or no regard for employee participation, respect, dignity, or fairness. Additionally, there is little or no accountability for the actions of top management in the Postal Service. Many postal facilities consequently have toxic work environments, and they can be a catalyst or trigger for serious acts of workplace violence, including homicide and suicide. The associated rewards system for behavior consistent with the postal culture core values, moreover, enables systemic organizational and individual bullying of employees at all levels of the organization.
I define a toxic workplace environment as a workplace where there is a high incidence of stress-related illnesses. These stress-related illnesses are manifested by psychological and physical deterioration. In other words, these types of environments seriously erode employees’ health and well-being. The primary factors contributing to a toxic workplace environment are high job demands, low job control, and low social support. Low social support generally entails a lack of respect and validation of employees’ dignity by their “superiors”. It also oftentimes includes organizational practices and methods that encourage the bullying of employees to meet corporate goals.
The name of the city letter carrier who committed suicide in Gastonia, NC on June 2, 2009 is Steven Spencer age 60. According to his obituary, Steven was married and leaves two daughters and three grandchildren. He was a member of the National Association of Letter Carriers/ and state representative for Muscular Dystrophy Association. He was the founder of the National Association of Letter Carriers Food Drive for Gaston County. He was very active in Scouting, attaining the highest rank of Eagle Scout. He also was a member of the Order of the Arrow. Steven was a veteran of the Vietnam War serving his country proudly in the US Navy.
I find it highly improbable that an employee will kill himself or herself in a postal facility or while on a postal route unless it is to send a clear message that a toxic workplace exists and the person can’t handle it anymore. Sadly, it also may be a tragic attempt to better the lot of one’s fellow coworkers by drawing attention to the tragic event itself.
Prior to Steven’s suicide, I was contacted by a relative of an employee at the Gastonia post office in April of this year. She was concerned because of what she reported as a toxic workplace environment at the Gastonia post office, lack of accountability to address employees’ concerns, and that the situation may lead to another workplace tragedy. Unfortunately, her worst concern became a reality on June 2, 2009. She further indicated several employees have resigned their positions at the office because of the toxic workplace environment and others were suffering from negative psychological and physical effects because of this environment.
I was told employees’ attempts, mostly city letter carriers, to have their concerns addressed over a two-year period included: filing of discrimination complaints and grievances, unprofessional workplace assessments, town hall meetings, contacts to congressional representatives both locally and nationally, contacts to the Office of the Inspector General (OIG), and petitions to Charlotte postal District officials as well as to national representatives of the Postal Service and the NALC. She further indicated that none of these measures contributed to fully addressing the workplace environment or alleviating its negative impact for the employees at the Gastonia Post Office.
In order for the U.S Postal Service to become a safe and healthy organization and thereby prevent future workplace tragedies, which have been at an epidemic level over the past three decades, there is an urgent need for congressional intervention and legislation to address its toxic postal culture. Dr. Gary Namie and his wife, Dr. Ruth Namie, along with their colleague Dr. David Yamada, have for years pushed for such legislation at the state and federal level. In order for national legislation for the prevention of workplace bullying to have the intended impact, it would require sanctions to employers or their representatives who are in violation of a new workplace statute that defines workplace bullying as a harmful and illegal activity.
The Postmaster General, and Inspector General, must go!
Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
Chairman Edolphus Towns
U.S. House of Representatives
2157 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515
(202) 225-5051
Eric L. Wattree
wattree.blogspot.com
Ewattree@Gmail.com
Religious bigotry: It’s not that I hate everyone who doesn’t look, think, and act like me – it’s just that God does.
Short URL: http://www.veteranstoday.com/?p=35533
Posted by Eric L. Wattree on Jun 10 2010, With 0 Reads, Filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
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EW => And President Obama, where are you?!!
TD => Come on E. You can’t expect Little O to do everything, can you? He’s busy playing with Paul McCartney, playing golf and shooting a few hoops. And ignoring the CEO of BP. I mean, that takes a lot of time, man! Little post-people are beneath his newly exalted dignity (as are we Vets).
Good post again E. Your Vet in arms! T.
Hey Tom,
I’m an Obama fan, so I sure hope that’s not true. But I have to admit, he’s not looking very good at this point. He could resolve this problem with a phone call. So I’ll be seeing what he’s made of real soon. But I’m sure you’ll be keeping us both honest :>)
Your brother (in both senses of the word).
Eric
Change? You fools still have some pocket ‘Change’ left, don’t you?
Hey Lese, I had 15 cents the other day, and nothing I could buy with it.
T.
Would you bigot whiny idiots just shut up and go shoot yourselves to improve the average IQ of the human race? Assuming you believe that you’re human.
President Obama is NOT to blame for the crackheads at the post office. Since you’re all on drugs yourselves, you don’t remember, but it was your buddy Ronnie, the delusional “I helped liberate prison camps” (he never left Hollywood) drug abuser, that screwed over the post office.
If you stick-in-the-muds would get off your duffs and go vote for real progressives — which you most certainly did not do this week — President Obama might get a cooperative congress, instead of a bunch of sit-on-your-rear and blame-everyone-else obstructionists, like you.
When you have an easy, secure, federal job, and you kill yourself because you don’t get overtime pay, then you’re a nutcase, and were going to kill yourself anyway, probably to get away from a nagging wife and thieving druggie kids. Names of gods. You’re going to compare delivering junk mail to combat PTSD?
You want a time-pressure job, try rolling and throwing newspapers. If the front-page truck is an hour late, if it’s raining and you have to double-bag, if you have five little old ladies who want the paper delivered to their doorstep, if a cop stops you because you’re doing sixty in a school zone at 3 in the morning, if you don’t get every paper delivered before daylight, YOU get chewed out, and that’s EVERY SINGLE DAY OF THE YEAR, INCLUDING CHRISTMAS AND NEW YEAR. Take Sundays off? Go pick up your Sunday paper, and imagine rolling and double-bagging and throwing a couple of thousand of those.
The psychotic sinecure posties with their federal pay, and benefits, and retirement, whining about “stress,” can clean my toilet with their tongue, and so can all critics of President Obama, if you gargle with bleach first.
P.S. Mucasso teaches on-line (box-top) and is selling his one book. Not the greatest credentials.
Die Hard,
You are wrong on so many levels that I don’t know where to start. First, I’m a progressive and is one of Obama’s biggest supporters – and was supporting him with my column, and checkbook, when he was 37 points behind Hillary Clinton in the polls.
Secondly, you obviously have no idea what’s going on in the post office or you wouldn’t be spewing such nonsense (I was tempted to say idiocy, but unlike you, I’m going to refrain from characterizing a person I don’t know).
Third, the Postal Service is a United States government agency, and President Obama is the chief executive of all federal agencies, which means that he could immediately improve the lives of 600,000 American workers with just a phone call. So the mere fact that he doesn’t do that is directly responsible for every unlawful act committed against them.
And finally, your rant against postal workers makes it abundantly clear that you don’t get the big picture. This campaign is not about postal workers against people who deliver papers, or steelworkers, or retail clerks, or even liberals against conservatives. This is about a government assault on middle-class standard of living in this country.
In the new global economy the United States must now compete against countries that pay their workers less per week than we pay for lunch per day. As a result, the American middle-class standard of living has become a liability to both business interests and the government. So if you don’t want to be turned into a peasant, I suggest that you stop name-calling and start thinking about what’s happening to you.
By the way, you referred to me as bigot for calling out Obama for his inaction. In that regard, since you’re obviously more adept in dealing with “teams” than concepts and truth, I thought you might be surprised to know that I am Black – and to my knowledge, I’ve been Black all of my life.
So, for your own good, I suggest that you do a little more thinking, and a lot less ranting, because at his point, you seem to be singularly deficient in both.