USPS’s New Ergonomic Program

by

Bob Del Prete

Former Southern Region Safety & Health Rep/Pompano Beach Steward

In January of 2003, the USPS introduced a new nationwide program designed to reduce the number of musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) suffered by postal workers each day. This new program is called the Ergonomic Risk Reduction Process (or ERRP and yes, another acronym!) and the USPS has high hopes that in the long run it will significantly impact the way we do our jobs on a daily basis.

To improve the way we do our jobs and to make the workplace more suitable to the worker’s needs, the USPS has contracted a number of ergonomic engineers to go to various facilities across the country to observe workers working so that new, worker friendly methods and equipment can be instituted wherever possible. In other words, they will attempt to adapt the workplace to the worker. This nationwide program is based upon a pilot program that was begun at the Albany (NY) P & DC about two years ago, and this program has been credited with consistently and significantly lowering the injury rate at that facility. OSHA representatives have personally told me that the injury rate at the Albany facility is continuing to fall to this day.

Some of the improvements that were made in Albany were the installation of equipment that reduced bending at the waist, the rearrangement of equipment in a manner that reduced excessive and strenuous twisting of the upper torso, and the introduction of equipment that made lifting easier. A trademark of this program is worker involvement through active participation with the contracted ergonomic engineers and with the local safety and health committee. The filing of Form 1767s is encouraged, as is the filing of legitimate CA-1s. Postmaster Jack Potter has enthusiastically endorsed and launched the program on a nationwide basis mainly because of its success in Albany, and because USPS compensation costs zoomed from 900 million dollars two years ago to a whopping 1.5 billion dollars last year!

To begin this program, I have been told that the USPS identified those facilities nationwide with the highest injury rates and has had, and will continue to have, coordinators, OSHA officials, and union reps introduce themselves to the respective safety and health committees to describe the process. In the APWU Southern Region, the programs have begun in the Fort Worth and Nashville P&DCs, and it will be introduced in Tampa, Birmingham, and Austin by June 2003, with more sites to be chosen in the latter part of this year. Facilities will then continue to be scheduled for introduction of the process over the next five years.

Why is the APWU backing this program as of now (NOTE: This support is subject to change!)? For a number of reasons. First, as you may recall the OSHA ergonomic standard was scrapped by Pres. George W. Bush as soon as he took office. Without a solid, legal foundation for the APWU to stand upon, and with no new ergonomic standard on the horizon, this program basically represented a glimmer of hope for all of the postal workers who, by the USPS’s own admission, are continuing to get hurt on the job.

Simply put, the APWU is backing this program at this time because it makes moral sense, it makes economic sense, and studies have proven that these programs have worked well in other industrial settings. If the process gets results, i.e. a lowered injury rate, we all benefit. Less workplace injuries means less compensation costs; less compensation costs means a better bottom line; and a better bottom line means a better and stronger entity that can better employ us for, hopefully, a longer period of time. It must be stressed that the APWU, however, will remain vigilant of the process because of possible resistance from lower level managers and supervisors, and because the process could become a tool to issue discipline to workers.

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Last modified: July 13, 2007