Employees yelling and cussing. Throwing equipment. Saying, “Let’s go outside and I will rip you a new (expletive).”
These incidents and others happened at the Springfield post office plant on Chestnut Expressway, according to a new report by the U.S. Postal Service Inspector General. It called out the facility’s crew of 278 staffers, citing “a long-standing culture of distrust” and a “breakdown” in communication between management, workers and their labor union representatives.
It’s a costly problem: Inspectors found that the Springfield Processing & Distribution Center spent $5.1 million in grievance payouts over a period from late 2017 to early 2021. That’s according to an email from the inspector general’s office that accompanied the report’s release, along with a Monday-afternoon Facebook post on the postal inspector page that linked to the report. (That Facebook post appeared to have been deleted by Tuesday afternoon, according to a News-Leader review of the page.)