In a letter to the USPS Manager of OSHA Coordination, OSHA wrote:
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) approved the United States Postal Service (USPS) as a Voluntary Protection Programs (VPP) Corporate participant on April 12, 2005, for a period of 60 months.
As we have discussed, OSHA remains concerned about the USPS’s commitment to the VPP Corporate, and the organization’s meeting the requirements and criteria for participation. As a result, OSHA has decided not to renew the USPS’s participation in VPP Corporate.
Current USPS VPP sites will maintain their VPP status as long as they adhere to all site-based requirements. In the future, USPS VPP applicants must apply using the site-based application process. If you have any questions, please contact Steven F. Witt, Director, Directorate of Cooperative and State Programs at (202) 693-2200.
The Post Office would do just fine if it fired all management and brought in half as many trained managers with degrees and outside experience
Michael from the Springfield Mass L&DC do you remember how they tried to hide when the Joint Labor Management Safety and Health Meetings were from the APWU?
Do you remember the hissy fits they would throw when Maintenance barricaded their work areas? I remember locking out the machine and they blew a gasket.
David Sault are you speaking about the Electrical Work Plan?
National Officers have advised to file OSHA Complaints and ask for an onsite inspection, before they kill us.
Report safety hazards by filling out a Form 1767.
You can prove you reported the hazard or unsafe condition.
If management does not correct / abate the hazard, you have proof positive you told them.
Read the EL-801: Page 4: Items D and E !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
OSHA requires workers to comply with all safety and health standards that
apply to their actions on the job. Therefore, employees should:
a. Read the OSHA posters: OSHA Poster 2203, Job Safety and Health
Protection, or OSHA Poster 3165, You Have a Right to a Safe and
Healthful Workplace.
b. Follow the employer’s safety and health rules and wear or use all
required gear and equipment.
c. Follow safe work practices for their job as directed by their employer.
d. Report hazardous conditions to a supervisor or safety committee.
e. Report hazardous conditions to OSHA if the employer does not fix
them.
f. Cooperate with OSHA inspectors.
Wow so many idiots…..
You think OSHA cares about you???? They care about those fine millions of dollars. They hired 2000 new inspectors.. How do you think they are going to get paid??? Fines…OSHA is in it for the fines…..
Now, where do you think that money comes from??? The money tree? Congress??
No it comes from the PO. Why is your jobs at risk? Answer: MONEY
Keep on calling OSHA… Next delivery you will be making is the morning paper.
If you see a hazard report. Write it up… Don’t be an idiot…or you just might be an idiot at the unemployement line…
The Post Office has dispensed with Safety Meetings and hazard abatements, I understand that the disability retirements in the last two years has multiplied 400 times. Where is OSHA???
As a Boston BEM. I cannot under 70-e reset a elevators or repair without full PPE. Can’t lockout the equipment have to find the problem first. Management gives a rats a**. OSHA rules
NFPA 70-E is a consensus standard that is not a law, it is a guide. OSHA cannot enforce a consensus standard unless they have formally adopted it and gone through the appropriate process of public comment and eventually notifying the regulated public that the will be enforcing it. OSHA has done none of that. Certainly our mechanics should be locking out equipment before working on it, and using appropriate techniques and protective equipment in those instances when the equipment cannot be locked out.
OSHA cannot make a mechanic study for a test much less pass a test on 70-E to keep your job. That is ridiculous. Remember why OSHA came to the facility? The APWU wanted locals to call them. Just lockout the darn equipment and you don’t have to worry about it.
im have thyrod cancer — the kind of cancer is cause breath chemicals– my Dr ask, if im, or still working ( my answer was (yes) the usps.
the usps use chemical to cllean the equipment
Springfield MA LDC had a casual expediter crushed to death by a yard spotter, and almost had a serious hazmat situation on numerous spills. Yet the VPP flag is still flying in the front. And so it goes
About time!!!
this program is and was a joke for postal management!!!
Providence has a very competent APWU union team to protect your rights and help keep you safe. Our maintenance national business agent is also out of that area. I hope that you can work with them to solve your problem, or all of us North east area ET’s might have to live, or die by the outcome. Good Luck David.
OSHA is currently training and testing at the Providence P& DC in an attempt to push safety certification through the system for Electronics Technicians. Unfortunately, it is acting in an unsafe way and contrary to the mandate of Congress to decrease the hazard in the work environment. This is the case because OSHA uses the NFPA 70-e standard which requires testing “proficiency” (expertise and competence) based on ten questions. These questions include questions that require the calculation or determination of life-and-death variables like hazard level, PPE, and barriers for different voltage and current levels. These calculations require access to building line drawings we have no access to, and training in interpreting those line drawings – which we also do not have. Technicians are not qualified after eights hours of lecture to calculate these life-and-death variables. Indeed, technicians are not sanely expected to calculate such things at all. Nurses don’t do surgery. Paralegals do not argue legal issues before the Supreme Court. And technicians do not calculate or determine variables of life-and-death import–engineers correctly do that. I refuse to answer such questions due to the grave danger supporting the delusion of competence in this area may give to technicians and managers. I will probably eventually be fired. But what is right is right. And what is wrong is many times fatal to someone. If you don’t understand the seriousness of this issue, go to Youtube and search for “arc flash accidents.”