Welcome to the machine! (part 2)

Class Action Grievance on Safety Issues on Tour 1

What does it take to get safety talks back on the ‘front burner’? I’m waiting to see. But if you want to at least get them on the ’side burner’, file a grievance.

As I stated in my last post, I filed a grievance that I was not afforded a safety talk the week of March 15-21, and two days later a safety talk was held. The following week, no safety talk. So on April 9th, I filed another grievance for no safety talk the past week. Two days later, we had a safety talk. What does it take to get a safety meeting in automation? File a grievance!

There are many reasons why we need to emphasize having consistent safety talks. At first glance, many would say “What’s the point. They’re useless because they never talk about the real workfloor issues.” And that is probably right 70% of the time. But this is the only time that you can give feedback to management with your co-workers in attendance. And many times, their support and input can be valuable. It just might be enough to change things.

I remember when the workfloor was filled with manual cases. It was like a maze and it seem to stretch on forever. The work for clerks wasn’t that physically challenging. You sat at your case and pitched letters or stood at your case to pitch flats. But today’s clerks are very physically challenged. From the moment you clock in, you are pushing trucks, pulling post cons, shoving tray racks in all directions, unloading hampers of heavy bulk mail, emptying towers, bending and lifting trays of mail two feet over your head, not to mention the repetitive motions of loading and sweeping these machines and it doesn’t stop for the next 7 1/2 hours.

Asst. Clerk Craft Dir. Robert Rodriguez has filed a class action grievance on this subject which is now at step 2 so to help in this case, filing grievances will only help to improve our chances. File, file, and file again and talk to your co-workers to get them to file.

If ever there was a need for weekly safety talks, it’s now. But management doesn’t want to stop the production. Welcome to the machine!