UPS employees say heavy workloads, COVID-19 safety measures and sweltering summer heat are pushing them to the limit. “It's about 105 to 110 and hotter in the back of that truck. We're working, 10, 11, 12, 13 hours a day. We’re tired.”
High temperatures can have devastating effects on the body. What begins as fatigue or fainting can quickly lead to organ failure.
UPS does not air condition its boxy brown trucks where, on hot days, drivers say they have clocked temperatures above 150 degrees in the cargo areas. The company does not consistently provide drivers with water and the ice machines at its facilities frequently run out or break, workers said. UPS said air conditioning trucks drivers constantly turn on and off is ineffective, as is air conditioning many warehouses with large, open doors.
“They ask, ‘Are you alright?’ but see if you can keep going,’” said a warehouse worker in Dallas, who asked not to be named for fear of retaliation. “There are days when I go home, I feel like passing out.” “It’s unthinkable to me what has been happening with OSHA,” said Terri Gerstein, senior fellow at the Economic Policy Institute and director of the State and Local Enforcement Project at Harvard Law School. “They are abdicating their duty to enforce the law.”
Data obtained in early June showed more than 350 complaints concerned the Postal Service, FedEx and UPS inadequately protecting workers from coronavirus. Of those, OSHA conducted five inspections. Vinnie Perrone, president of Teamsters Local 804, left, speaks to UPS workers at a protest of working conditions at their Brooklyn facility on July 24, 2020.have broadened worker protections. Among those is California, which is the only state that has a comprehensive standard to help prevent heat illness in outdoor workers.
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