Feeling targeted and under attack, Chicago-area postal workers rallied downtown to call greater attention to what they insist are increasingly unsafe work conditions.
With the busiest part of their year just around the corner, National Association of Letter Carriers Chicago Branch 11 President Elise Foster said she’s never seen morale among workers any lower than where it now stands.
“It’s like nothing is being done,” Foster told The Center Square. “They could at least like pair people up on a route, get extra police patrolling in that area or if they have to stop the mail to let the people know that we can’t continue to keep going down this block where multiple carriers keep getting robbed. We want more prosecutions.”
The protest comes just days after police charged a 15-year-old with the broad-daylight slaying of mail carrier Octavia Redmond back in July as she made the rounds on her South Side route.
“We just don’t see where management is doing anything to try to show the letter carriers that we’re trying to do something,” Foster added. “You know, just giving us lip service when we want to see action. We’re working in a combat zone. In this whole city, anything could break out at any given time and we don’t have any protection out there or no means of how we’re going to get to safety.”
Even with the number of overall robberies of carriers across the region down from 103 in fiscal year 2023 to just 31 during the one that ended earlier this month, Foster argues she can’t recall a time when so many workers came across as feeling so dejected.
“We want the postmaster general to hear this. We want our customers to hear it, so they can get our elected officials to sign on,” Foster added. “We need something quick.”
Exacerbating the situation all the more, Foster said all the drama is happening as workers continue to toil without a contract and have done so for more than the last year.
“I would say that the morale is down because we don’t have a contract and we’re out here working in hazardous conditions,” she said. “You’re seeing other labor organizations calling for a possible strike and then they get a contract and it’s kind of not fair to us. We’ve been waiting since May of 2023, about 500 to 600 days, and we cannot strike.”
