A postal union president has lashed out at the U.S. Postal Service for its handling of workers possibly exposed to anthrax at a New York mail facility.
Close to 7,000 employees work at the Morgan mail center on the West Side of Manhattan, which likely processed the anthrax-tainted letters sent to NBC News and The New York Post, a union official said. The crew includes 2,000 workers relocated there from the Church St. mail facility after the collapse of the Twin Towers.
While the USPS has said that a random sampling of employees will be conducted, the union is demanding that all employees, machines and the air be tested for anthrax contamination, said William Smith, the president of The New York Metro Area Postal Workers Union.
“Why is it that postal employees have to be treated different?” he asked, referring to the swift action to test employees after an anthrax-tainted letter was opened in the office of Sen. Tom Daschle (D-SD) on Oct. 23. “A lot of employees are going to slip through the cracks and some employees exposed may not be tested.”
As of Tuesday afternoon, only 48 employees had been tested and testing had begun on some machines, he said. The testing began on employees at 1 a.m. Tuesday. The letter to NBC’s Tom Brokaw was postmarked Sept. 18.
Smith has asked an attorney to look into possible legal action against the USPS to force testing.
Smith claimed that the USPS is not honest with its workers or the American public and that the Morgan facility workers have not been treated properly.
He said that if the postal workers are contracting anthrax disease, the American public is at risk as well. “The postal service is going to get it first, but if it comes to you, you’ll get it too,” he said.
Smith said major political and entertainment personalities such as President Bill Clinton, Mayor Rudolph Guiliani, talk show host Rosie O’Donnell and others–have requested that mail not be delivered to their homes.
Alarm reached new heights at the Morgan facility Tuesday after two postal workers were confirmed to have died from inhaled anthrax and word spread of another suspected case of the deadliest form of the disease in New Jersey.
Many employees were afraid to come to work and some began calling in sick. Smith fielded close to 50 calls on Monday from employees expressing concerns about reporting to the site that processes or re-routes the majority of mail coming into Manhattan, he said.
Two floors of the mail-processing center where the anthrax-tainted letter was likely processed are bogged down. “It’s almost going to come to a complete stop until they do the testing on the machines,” he said. “If [workers] see anything they’re afraid of, they’re not going to touch it. That’s what they’re instructed to do and then call management. Naturally that’s going to slow things down.”
