William Simpson
The U.S. Postal Service will have to compensate a probationary mail carrier in Oregon who was fired after reporting an injury on the job, a scenario that occurs all too often at the USPS, federal officials allege.
A federal judge ordered the postal service to pay the worker $141,307 in lost wages and damages for emotional distress after a two-day trial, the Labor Department announced Wednesday.
The USPS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“The U.S. Postal Service has repeatedly fired probationary employees after they reported workplace injuries,” Marc Pilotin, a regional labor attorney in San Francisco, said in the report. release. “Employees and their families are harmed by these unfounded terminations. In fact, the Oregon court concluded that they caused ‘significant mental, emotional and financial distress.'”
Judge Adrienne Nelson of the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon found the Postal Service discriminated against and wrongfully terminated the carrier 21 days after they reported to their supervisor that they had injured a leg near the end of their shift while unloading mail. from a USPS truck. The worker was fired 11 days before the probationary period ended, the DOL said.
Since 2020, the department has filed nine federal lawsuits related to probationary workers fired by the USPS after reporting injuries in California, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Washington state. The DOL also found a repeated pattern of similar actions during that period, resolving five related investigations in California, Florida, Illinois and New Jersey, it said.
Three similar cases are awaiting trial against the USPS in Washington state, the agency added.
The DOL alleges that the USPS failed to follow its policies in several cases, failing to provide timely evaluations of workers. In the Oregon decision, Nelson ruled that the USPS’s failure to complete evidentiary reports provided “evidence of intent to retaliate,” the department said.
In one pending case, a court ordered the post office to pay the labor department $37,222 for destroying text messages and trashing the personnel records of a probationary mail carrier. And last year, a federal court in Tacoma, Washington, found that the USPS retaliated against a probation worker who reported a workplace accident.
