"The strategy to deal with that? That would be no plan at all. No runners, no casuals. no cartage agents. Just work harder, be safe, take your breaks, and don't expect any more money."
I was hired along with well over 100 hundred other people to work at a FedEx facility through the holidays. When I showed up, along with around 70 other new workers, they gave us our work areas and had us sign in on a time sheet. We did a few short stretches and immediately went off to work.
There wasn't anything even slightly resembling a safety briefing during any of this. No "don't walk on the belts", no "don't wander through the work areas outdoors", not even a "don't lift with your back". There was no instruction on how to safe and efficiently use equipment. Employees unloading trailers were dropping walls because they couldn't reach packages near the tops of the walls. None of them were aware of what a loading stand was (at the time I wasn't aware that we had any available; I found a couple later on). For the most part I learned how to operate the equipment via trial and error. Hook two pieces of equipment up. Does it do what you were hoping it would? No? Try something else. Everywhere I went you'd see people bending over to pick up packages. They had no idea what safe lifting techniques were. At one point I saw a trailer that was being unloaded start to pull away from the dock. The two unloaders inside weren't very happy about the ordeal and the powered roller belt (is that the right term?) was wrecked as it dumped out the back of the trailer. I realize that this is the sort of thing that happens from time to time (it happened to me one time back when I worked for UPS), but it's pretty ominous that this sort of thing would happen on my very first day there.
Sorry about being somewhat vague. I don't want to give enough information to identify myself, but I am really concerned about what's happening at that warehouse. They're not even trying to prevent accidents. As far as I can tell there's no safety program, there's no training program. The supervisors are trying hard to keep things together, but appear completely overwhelmed. I just don't see how they intend to make it through Christmas without several major injuries, let alone the back injuries that they aren't even trying to avoid. What's happening there isn't safe.
