It's now been over 20 years that I have been working on these machines. First it was the OCR's and BCS's and then came the DBCS's. I was on the acceptance team when we first recieved the DBCS's. We didn't DPS anything back then and there was very little two-passing. The two-passing was to put the mail in a "case sequence". That was so the carrier could case his/her mail in a squence order and not be jumping all over the case. We did this also on the BCS's. I suppose it saved the carrier time casing the mail.
After we bought the DBCS's, Gil Rojas was our supervisor and he started something entirely new with us. At the begining of the Tour, we would go through 5 to 10 minutes doing strecthing exercises. At first I thought it was kind of stupid but after 8 hours on that damn machine, it wasn't that bad of an idea. I hated all the bending I had to do to reach the row of bottom two bins. I wasn't sure my back would survive. And if you were short, they were having problems with the top row bins. But it's your job, so you just keep going while learning how not to injure yourself in the mean time.
That lasted about eight months and then I was back to my bid job on the OCR's. I couldn't believe how much difference there was to the way my body felt. Was I ever so glad to be back. The OCR's and BCS's were worked at waist height and the bins were much longer so a lot more mail could be in them before they had to be emptied. And of course, on the OCR's we didn't 2-pass, so the trays were loaded directly onto a belt for TMS. We didn't have to stack them 4 high on top of a 5 foot rack like we do on the DBCS's.
Well needless to say, even though clerks were having problems with the design of the DBCS's, management kept on buying them. But a brave soul, a lone wolf crying in the dark so to speak, working at the Denver Plant started questioning the Ergonomic consequences that was posed to the clerks who work these "Work Comp Time Bombs". His name is Loyd Reeder. Back in the early 90's he contacted National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), and they did a three year investigation in Denver of ERRP and other supposed "solutions" to the flawed ergonomic design of the DBCS.
It's my contention that there is nobody at National and probably only a handful of Local officers across the country that have ever worked on a DIOS or DBCS to even know what it's all about. That's probably why it took a clerk in Denver, who was going through what you and I go through every day, to get NIOSH and OSHA involved.
The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration's (OSHA) Strategic Partnership Program has released their Ergonomic Verification Report for the Denver P&DC's Ergonomic Risk Reduction Process. The Verification Team visited the Denver site on Oct. 25-27, 2007. The overall evaluation of the process as it is functioning at the Denver P&DC was overwhelmingly positive. And in late May, National APWU relesed a summary report (below) of OSHA's report.
How does this affect us? I'm not sure but it does bring the Safety Issues back on the front burner and that's where it needs to be. The Ergonomic issues that we deal with while working these machines should be one of top priority. The report states:
"The DBCS machines continue to be an area of significant concern because musculoskeletal
disorder (MSD) - related injuries/illnesses continue to occur."
One of the suggestions in the report was on the rotations of the feeder/sweeper.
"To reduce the risk present to the lower back and to the shoulders, adhere to the established 30 minute rotation schedule between the Sweeper and the Feeder as recommended in the DBCS/DPS Methods and Support Equipment Guide. Additional ergonomic studies and cooperative investigations with workers may reveal other appropriate rotation schedules."
And one of the issues in the report that many have questioned, is just how high are we suppose to stack full trays of mail and be safe about it?
"Stacking mail trays on the 1226 Pie Carts:
a. Enlist the ERRP committee to conduct an ergonomic assessment to
determine why the practice of stacking the loaded trays on top of the pie
carts over two high occurs. Develop administrative control methods to
avoid this practice and provide viable alternatives to avoid stacking loaded
mail trays over two high on top of the 1226 pie cart."
Well, we know nothing is going to come about this. Management is not going to spend one ounce of energy in consideration of your safety or health. It's not in their game plan. It just won't happen. Their only objective is to run as much mail as they can and that's it. Make the machines run faster, make them have more bins, make them bigger. If you happen to injure yourself or develope carpal tunnel syndrome, it was your fault. You can bet on it. And that's going to be our downfall because "Ergonomics training won't make up for a bad design."
