from: http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0425postal25.html

Mail workers ordered to lose gloves

Deirdre Hamill/The Arizona Republic

Postal Service worker David Hernandez has been sent home several times for defying a new ban on gloves.

Accident fear prompts ban

Dennis Wagner
The Arizona Republic
Apr. 25, 2003 12:00 AM

After more than two years of urging U.S. mail handlers to wear gloves as protection against terrorism, the U.S. Postal Service in Arizona has banned gloves for employees who operate sorting machines.

Postal Service officials claim the prohibition was imposed to prevent hand injuries that could result if gloves were caught in automated mail-sorting equipment. Union leaders, fearful of chemical or biological terrorism, counter that there never has been such an injury and the policy reversal makes no sense.

"It just came out of the blue - boom!" said David Hernandez, 34, who faces termination from his job at the General Mail Facility in Phoenix for defying the ban. "It's just completely outrageous. . . . I've never heard of an accident like that. But we're under a real threat of vile chemical agents being introduced through the mail."

The dispute, limited to Arizona so far, threatens to become a nationwide controversy among postal workers, who have been particularly anxious about mail-borne threats after two were killed in a 2001 anthrax attack.

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Ronda Carrington, Arizona spokeswoman for the Postal Service, said the April 17 policy change came after a workplace inspection by the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration. She acknowledged that the new policy overturns a longtime practice of telling employees to wear gloves as protection against terrorism.

"It's a judgment call on everyone's part," she said. "Safety is of paramount importance to the Postal Service."

In an interview earlier this week, after mail handlers in Tacoma, Wash., discovered a suspicious powder, Carrington claimed that all Arizona mail workers were given free gloves and encouraged to wear them. On Thursday, she retracted that statement and said it was made before she learned of the glove ban.

Renee Breeden, president of the state postal union, said the controversy seems to be developing at postal facilities nationwide. Gloves are worn by most of the 3,000 postal clerks, sorters and maintenance workers in her Arizona locale. Breeden said the vinyl material is so thin that it would tear away if snagged and that she never has heard of a related hand injury.

"We are currently in negotiations to get the gloves back," she said.

According to internal memos provided by Hernandez, the issue arose after OSHA cited a Western mail facility for not providing gloves to machine operators. Postal authorities challenged the citation, arguing that gloves might get caught in equipment. In response, the memo says, OSHA not only withdrew its citation but ruled that gloves are inappropriate. A notice warns that postal supervisors "can be held criminally responsible" if they don't enforce the glove ban.

An OSHA inspector assigned to the Postal Service declined comment.

Guidelines issued by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention state that protective, impermeable gloves "should be worn by all workers who handle mail" unless that would create a hazard greater than the threat of biological contamination.

Hernandez has been sent home at least three times for wearing gloves at his station. He worked one day this week after supervisors supplied a gel designed to fend off biological agents. Hernandez said the lotion does not provide real security and leaves hands vulnerable to paper cuts.

Carrington, the postal spokeswoman, said she could not comment specifically on Hernandez.

A nine-year employee with three children, Hernandez said he fears being fired because of a policy that forces him to choose between keeping his job or protecting his family.

"It's just making me sicker and sicker being put in that position," he said.

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