The summers in Arizona are too hard to handle.
Things that aren’t supposed to melt are melting like ice cream. In July, the city of Phoenix reached the hottest temperatures of the year and it looks like it is not going to end soon. Some employers forget their responsibility of taking care of employees and instead are busy in getting jerk-boss of the year titles.
The USPS drivers must deliver mail in trucks with no air conditioner in heat that cooks a raw steak to medium in just a couple of hours.
Recently, Arizona lawmaker Rep. Shawnna Bolick did something to make people aware of how horrendous the working conditions are for USPS drivers.
She wrote a letter to the American Postal Workers Union leadership and Postal Service executives in which she states: “It has come to my attention that quite a few USPS employees over the past few weeks in the Phoenix area have been sent to the emergency room to deal with heatstroke and heat exhaustion.
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The lawmaker said that she was shocked to know that the employees have no air conditioning in their trucks as the temperature soars up to 128 degrees (53 °C) inside of them.
As it appears, US Postal Service knows the consequences brought by these hazardous working conditions. Earlier this year, they received a $150,000 fine for the heat-related death of a 63-year-old Los Angeles area mail carrier.
One of the employees found a way to help them out. He measured the temperature in his truck for a couple of weeks, he realized that temperatures have averaged about 128 degrees Fahrenheit inside of the vehicle. He tried an experiment to see if it’s hot enough to cook a steak inside his truck.
He placed the raw steak on his dashboard and left it there from 10 am to 12:30 pm, the steak had an internal temperature of medium-rare steak (142 degrees).
Bolick asked what USPS is doing to improve employees’ working conditions and take the necessary steps to solve the situation.