Chris Kirkham and Benjamin Lesser
Miguel Cabezola, a driver for United Parcel Service Inc in Tucson, Arizona, complained on March 27 to US workplace safety regulators, alleging the company was taking a lax approach to social distancing, sanitizing equipment and quarantining workers with COVID-19 symptoms. He hoped for an inspection of the facility that would force changes to protect worker safety.
Instead, the state arm of the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) summarised Cabezola’s concerns in an email to company management, reviewed the UPS response and closed the file.
Over the next two months, a COVID-19 outbreak infected more than 40 Tucson UPS workers — including a manager who eventually died — and caused delivery delays throughout southern Arizona, according to interviews with six Tucson UPS workers and local union officials of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.
Cabezola’s complaint to the regulator, along with that of another worker in May, had “zero effect’’, said Karla Schumann, head of the local Teamsters union representing UPS workers.
Asked about the outbreak, UPS expressed regret about the manager’s death and said it has strengthened protocols requiring social distancing and sanitation since the early days of the pandemic.
The UPS outbreak is among dozens of cases identified by Reuters where OSHA largely disregarded workers who reported lax pandemic safety practices, according to agency records.
Reuters identified the workplace outbreaks through federal, state and local government data and news accounts detailing infections and deaths.
The news agency examined the regulatory response through OSHA data on complaints filed by workers and records of resulting inspections.
Reuters identified 106 US workplaces where employees complained of slipshod pandemic safety practices around the time of outbreaks — and regulators either never inspected the facilities or, in some cases, waited months to do so, according to the OSHA records.
The agency never inspected 70 of those workplaces, where at least 4,500 workers were infected by the coronavirus and 26 died after contracting COVID-19, according to the Reuters analysis.
The workers’ regulatory complaints came from a cross-section of companies that included some of America’s best-known firms, including Tesla Inc and Tyson Foods Inc.
As of mid-December, just 12 of the 106 facilities have been penalised in response to workers’ complaints. The complaints came from a wide range of workplaces, from meatpacking plants and factories to e-commerce warehouses and nursing homes.
Their employees alleged failures to enforce social distancing and mask-wearing; managers pressuring sick employees to work; and a lack of notification to employees about co-workers’ infections.
The 106 cases represent a sample of how OSHA has responded to the public health crisis. Reuters was unable to conduct a comprehensive examination of how the agency responded to safety complaints, infections and deaths because most state and local governments do not track or publicise data on workplace outbreaks.
UPS spokesman Matt O’Connor said the company’s safety practices have evolved over time as health authorities updated public guidance about COVID-19 and as personal protective equipment became more available after early shortages. The company, he said, had appropriate infection-control protocols in place at the time the manager died.
He said UPS takes “swift action” in response to workers’ reports of lax safety practices. — Reuters
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