“What do we want?”
“AC!”
“When do we want it?”
“Now!”
Those were the chants at a rally outside a UPS facility in McKinney Wednesday morning as workers and other labor union members called on the company to change heat safety protocols.
The rally came days after a UPS delivery driver fainted from alleged heat exhaustion and crashed his vehicle while working Friday afternoon, according to union officials. Temperatures reached 102 degrees that day.
The driver had reported he wasn’t feeling well during his route but was told to keep driving to the facility, the union said. He was hospitalized and later released on Sunday.
Teamsters Local Union 767 President David Reeves said he wants UPS to take incidents like these more seriously.
“When somebody does call in with a heat related injury, they've got to be taken off the road,” Reeves said. “By doing that, [UPS] is going to ensure the safety of their employee, our member, along with the general public.”
Last year, UPS and the Teamsters union reached an agreement about vehicle heat safety after another McKinney-based delivery driver died from heat stress while delivering packages on his route. In late May, UPS said it equipped some delivery vehicles with cab fans, forced air induction systems, and exhaust heat shields to reduce floor temperature.
According to Reeves, the back of a package car can reach up to 130 degrees on a hot day.
But the company hasn’t installed air conditioning despite agreeing to equip new vehicles with AC at the start of this year.
Under the agreement between the union and UPS, the company said it will replace 28,000 package cars with new vehicles that have air conditioning over the five-year agreement.
“We’re equipping all new vehicles purchased with AC and making modifications to our existing package cars to improve airflow, temperature, and comfort for our drivers,” a UPS spokeswoman told KERA in an email earlier this week. “We will continue to purchase and deploy new vehicles with AC as quickly as possible.”
UPS worker Jonathan Gonzalez said he wants the company to consider what workers experience during extreme weather conditions.
“I hope somebody hears [our concerns] in the company and somebody makes a change,” Gonzalez said. “Whether it's hot, rainy, snow, hail, storm, whatever the conditions of the weather, we're still held to the standards of whatever the [company] says. And at times there's disciplinary reactions that come from that.”
Gonzalez and other workers said in the past, the company sent warning letters with “intent to suspend” to workers who called in and said they were feeling fatigue while working.
UPS worker Chris Diamond said instead of being told to end their routes, they’re usually told to keep working.
"You tell him you're not feeling good... and sometimes they make it that you did something wrong,” Diamond said. “It’s just you as a driver did something wrong. You didn't hydrate right, you didn't sleep right, you didn't eat right. It's always trying to turn it back around on us."
After asking for a statement, UPS declined to do so, citing an ongoing investigation.
Penelope Rivera is KERA’s news intern. Got a tip? Email Penelope at privera@kera.org.
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