'That’s not fair': DeJoy hearing gets heated as Democrat hammers him over unsafe working conditions
Appearing before the Subcommittee on Government Operations, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy was grilled by Rep. Nanette Barragán (D-CA), who demanded answers about working conditions for postal employees.
She cited DeJoy's report, saying the "635,000 postal employees" are "at the heart" of the USPS. She noted that it also says that the Postal Service is "investing more in the employees and the facilities they're working in."
She asked about the international postal processing center in Carson, California, where she said workers were being forced to work in gruelling temperatures.
"Do you believe that employees should have to work in a facility that is below 30 degrees?" she asked.
"No," he agreed.
"And do you believe that employees should be forced to work in a facility that is more than 100 degrees?" Barragán asked.
"Nope," he said.
"I agree with you. I don't think these are suitable working conditions," Barragán said, citing the OSHA regulations on the temperature range for employees. "Let me tell you about working conditions in that facility, and it happens to be in my Congressional district. I wrote you a letter about this, which I asked you for a phone call about. I will say, your staff, somebody did respond back. Now, these are working conditions that the postal employees at the international servicing center in Carson, California, have been faced with."
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She explained that between Dec. 2022 to March 2023, the facility registered temperatures as low as 28 degrees when it was cold, and the building was intended to be a warehouse, not a processing center. She said that there is HVAC in the building, but it's not enough to cover the full facility and keep things warm.
It ultimately led to protests outside the building, so she visited to see the conditions herself. She asked what he intended to do to fix it. DeJoy said that it's actually a problem for "many facilities" with "different types of conditions" that are unacceptable. In that case, he said they're not leasing the facility anymore, and they're moving it to Los Angeles.
DeJoy said that it was a 15-year problem, and he couldn't take responsibility for that.
Barragán stepped in and said she knew it wasn't a 15-year problem because the building only had a 5-year lease.
"When they entered that lease, they should have demanded safe working conditions there," Barragán continued. "And you basically just said — hey, there's unsafe working conditions, and that is what it is. That should not be the response to the men and women who need to deliver and do deliver for America. Your response should be, and I was hoping your response would be, 'I'm going to see how fast we can get the workers out of these unsafe working conditions.'"
"That's unfair. That's very unfair because that's, in fact, what I've been doing. That's a very unfair accusation," said DeJoy.
"You just said it is what it is," said Barragán.
DeJoy said that he's explaining the status of the "condition of the organization when we arrived here and what we've been trying to do."
See the exchange in the video below or at the link here.
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