US postal workers feel let down by Government

24 Oct, 2001 09:23 AM3 mins to read

By ANDREW BUNCOMBE

WASHINGTON - Gail and Tawana were not impressed. They had just been told by their managers at the Postal Service of the steps being put in place to try to counter the anthrax threat, but for the two friends it simply called to mind the old adage, Too little, too late.

"I think that we have got a raw deal. The letter came through the Post Office. They closed down the Congress but they kept us going," said Gail Saxton, a Washington postal worker.

"They should have taken us for testing. They lost nobody. We have lost two family members."

These are troubling times for Washington's postal workers, and none more so than for the 2300 employees based at Brentwood, where the notorious "infected letter" was handled and where 14 out of 29 locations within the now closed facility have tested positive for anthrax spores.

Two of their Postal Service family lie dead from anthrax infection, another two are seriously ill and who knows how many others may have been exposed.

But what is increasingly troubling those here and the 10,000 or more postal workers across the capital who have been told they need to take antibiotics to guard against infection, is the realisation that none of this needed to happen: shock and the fear of what might happen have been replaced by anger and disbelief about what did not happen.

Why, if the letter addressed to Senate leader Tom Daschle that led to around 30 people at the Capitol being exposed to anthrax passed through Brentwood, was the depot not closed? Why, if it was felt necessary to test 5000 Capitol Hill staff last week, was it not felt equally necessary to test the postal workers last week. Why did it have to take two deaths?

"I think it is racial. Most of the postal workers are black," said Saxton, who like her friend Tamara Richardson, describes herself as African-American.

"I hate to say it but it's true. They had to know that that letter came through Brentwood."

Richardson noted that since the attacks of September 11 and the subsequent spate of anthrax infections, there has been much talk in the United States of Americans pulling together. She said the way she and her colleagues had been treated made her feel like a second-class citizen.

The authorities would deny that their response to the anthrax outbreaks, even if those responses differed, was based on race. They are probably correct, but the comments from Brentwood workers yesterday are indicative of the anger and frustration being felt by thousands of their colleagues.

As they watched on television the queues of Capitol Hill staffers lining up for nasal swabs and antibiotics, their own requests, they say, fell on deaf ears. Said Saxton: "The management just kept saying 'we have to get the mail out'."

- INDEPENDENT

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