Forums Will Address Malaise Among Postal Workers

In the wake of a shooting rampage that left two postal workers slain and another dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, San Diego County postal authorities announced Tuesday a series of “quality circles” in which workers’ complaints will be addressed in an open forum.

Sue Reed, director of field operations, said she and county Postmaster Margaret Sellers met for two hours on Monday with unhappy workers at a postal station in El Cajon.

Reed said “quality circles,” in which workers openly discuss problems and air complaints, will occur periodically at post offices across the county.

“We’ve had four suicides and two murders among county postal workers in just the last few years,” Reed said. “Needless to say, something like that would disturb anybody.”

‘Exploding’ Postal Problems

Rep. Jim Bates (D-San Diego) said he had met with Reed and two other officials Monday in an effort to pinpoint why postal problems seem to be “exploding” in San Diego County.

“Four suicides and two murders. . . . Just the fact that these things happened , whether they’re related to poor working conditions or not, is enough to shake you up,” Bates said by telephone from his home in Washington. “We have to do what we can to get to the bottom of such unhappiness.”

Bates said the U.S. Postal Service is facing “major change” nationwide, but the problems in San Diego County are exacerbated by what he termed “unbelievable” growth.

“One of the areas in my district, Otay Mesa, now serves something like 20,000 people, but, because of budget restrictions, they don’t have a post office,” Bates said. “They have only a small contract station that’s terribly overburdened. In West Encanto, at the corner of 69th and Imperial, they have only this tiny post office serving a massive number of addresses. Just imagine the stresses.”

‘Minor Grumbling’

Reed said she and other officials had heard “only minor grumbling” from the El Cajon post office for “two to three years,” but that recently discontent had reached a crescendo. It stirred again last week, when Escondido postal worker John Merlin Taylor walked into the Orange Glen substation where he was employed and killed two co-workers, then fatally wounded himself.

On July 21, William Camp, a recently retired El Cajon letter carrier, committed suicide.

“I specifically am going to meet with the workers in El Cajon once a week every week for as long as I need to,” Reed said.

She said El Cajon employees had complained about dramatic increases in the volume of mail and routes not being changed to reflect the increase.

“Several workers were complaining that the lag time of restoring their routes to the customary eight-hour day was too long,” Reed said. “They complained of not understanding our promotion procedures. They said, ‘How do you guys decide promotions?’ Some want to start earlier in the morning, to get a quicker handle on the volume of mail. Just recently, the starting time at El Cajon was switched from 6:30 to 7:30 in the morning, and a lot of people were very upset about that.”

Times a Result of Curfew

Reed said that starting times at county post offices are often the result of San Diego’s location and of Lindbergh Field having a flight curfew. Mail from other parts of the country simply does not arrive until later than it should, Reed said.

“And even I feel we should have more autonomy at the local level,” she said. “I think everyone along the line feels that way. I want a lot of changes that we don’t seem able to make. . . . The Postal Service is a big organization, and change in a big organization is like pushing an elephant. It happens very slowly.”

Reed said many in the Postal Service see its problems as a microcosm of a troubled society.

“We have 800,000 people,” she said. “We’re the largest civilian employer in the world. We have more change going on right now than we’ve had in our history. We’re struggling with automation and with competition--from the parcel business, the overnight mail business and even with advertising concerns.

“It’s a lot of change all at once, not to mention what’s happening outside our doors . . . in the world at large.”