Compliance

We at the Providence RI PDC have crossed swords with OSHA. Guess who's going to win? Unfortunately, OSHA is Federal and national, so is the USPS. So the changes in our work practices to comply with OSHA will be mandated to the whole country. Our facility was cited for not using proper PPE [Personal Protective Equipment] to work on the machines. Until ETs are trained, we could not open any blue doors [lower or back doors] for any reason. If the machine could not continue to process mail, we performed the Lockout Tagout Procedure and removed the mail from the machine. In 3 days time, we lost 50% of our machines. Today we had day one of a two day training by OSHA, turns out we cannot pull a jam without Lockout/ Tagout and using PPE. However, the operator CAN pull jams only using the E-stop. When the operator calls for an ET, the ET has to Lock it out at the main disconnect completely. Our facility is having to purchase PPE at $200 per person rated for Category 2. When I came home from the class, I went through my closet to purge all the synthetic blend work shirts and pants, as we now are required to wear 100% natural fibers - even undergarments. Can I find a bra without Spandex?? Might be going to work tomorrow "commando"... div /div span style="font-style: italic; color: #bf00bf; font-family: bookman old style,new york,times,serif; font-weight: bold;"Blessings! Elaine/span, Electronics Technician USPS font style="font-weight: bold; color: #ff7f00; font-family: lucida console,sans-serif;" size="4" /font div /div