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Mail handlers in Florida suing US Postal Service

South Florida postal workers sued the US Postal Service on Monday seeking protection from the bioterrorism weapon anthrax, which surfaced in US mail after the Sept. 11 suicide attacks on the US.

The Miami local of the American Post Workers Union (APWU), which represents some 4,000 workers in greater Miami, Fort Lauderdale and Boca Raton areas, wants increased testing of workers for the rare livestock disease and demands that postal facilities be cleaned and tested and more masks and gloves be provided

The civil lawsuit, filed in US District Court in Miami, seeks to force the Postal Service into arbitration over safety issues resulting from the anthrax outbreak that has worried people across the US since last month's terror attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon that killed an estimated 4,800 people.

Two postal workers at the Brentwood central mail facility in Washington, which handles mail for the US Capitol, died after being infected with inhaled anthrax. Workers complained that the Postal Service was slow to act after anthrax-tainted mail was sent to the offices of Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle.

Anthrax, a disease generally confined to sheep, cattle, horses, goats and pigs, can be fatal to humans and has long been feared as a weapon of biological warfare.

Neil Flaxman, a Miami lawyer who crafted the lawsuit for the APWU Miami local, said postal workers are in the trenches of the US war on terrorism and the Postal Service was not giving them enough protection.

"It's the mail. That's the bomb. And it's all going through the hands of postal workers," he said at a news conference on the steps of the Miami federal courthouse. "If you're on the front line handling the ordnance, you're the one that needs the most protection."

A spokeswoman for the Postal Service declined immediate comment on the lawsuit, saying the agency's lawyers needed a chance to read it.

Union officials said they want three major postal facilities in Miami and several in Boca Raton, 80km to the north, shut down until they can be tested and cleaned.

The US anthrax outbreak was first detected in Boca Raton, where a worker at supermarket tabloid publisher American Media, Inc, died of the disease on Oct. 5. The AMI headquarters building was quarantined and authorities have subsequently said they believe the anthrax entered the building via the mail.

The lawsuit, which names the American Postal Workers Union national organization as a co-defendant, also seeks a judge's order to allow all postal workers, even those at windows serving the public, to wear gloves and protective masks.

Protective measures already adopted by the Postal Service, which include gloves and masks for behind-the-scenes workers, were woefully inadequate, union president Judy Johnson said.

"It's like putting a Band-Aid on open heart surgery to close the incision," she said.

The union demanded that any postal worker be allowed to wear gloves and mask.

"Whether we're in the public eye or not, we're in a time of war," Johnson said.

Postal Service spokeswoman Kathy Huggins said customer service workers were at low risk for anthrax infection and were not allowed to wear gloves and masks in part because it frightens customers.

"Customers are fearful. They are being handed things from our clerks and they are fearful, sometimes feeling they should have gloves," she said.

Workers who do not want to perform customer service tasks without protection are offered other assignments, she said.
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