By Adiel KaplanNBC
News
Matthew Moczygemba knew something was wrong when he ran out of thirst.
It was the middle of the afternoon on a 103
°
F (39°C) day in Fort Worth, Texas, and the UPS driver had been delivering packages for several hours.
He soon felt dizzy, stopped his truck, and threw up on the sidewalk.
“I stopped sweating and started getting cold,” said Moczygemba, 35, who has worked for UPS for five years.
"It was a bad feeling," she recalled.
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Moczygemba ended up in a hospital emergency room, where doctors diagnosed him with dehydration and heat exhaustion and administered multiple bags of intravenous fluid, according to medical records.
He was released a few hours later but has not returned to work in the nearly three weeks since.
"I'm nervous about coming back," Moczygemba said.
With heat waves sweeping the country, and states like Texas and Oklahoma experiencing record summer temperatures, workers exposed to the elements are increasingly struggling in the heat.
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More than a dozen UPS employees and union officials say more workers seem to be sick and hospitalized from heat this year than ever before.
In response, they demand that the company put in place more security measures.
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"Right and left people are falling," said Jeff Schenfeld, a Dallas shop steward and 25-year UPS veteran.
“Something is different this year.
There are a lot more people,” he added.
UPS is the world's largest package delivery company, and its ubiquitous brown trucks and warehouses largely lack air conditioning.
After posting record profits last year, the company installed cameras on its delivery trucks but did not change its heat safety protocols, according to the union, adding to complaints about the company's priorities.
Most UPS workers, some 350,000 people, are covered by the largest union contract in North America, which expires next year.
Thermal protections will be one of the key issues in the upcoming negotiations, according to the International Brotherhood of Truckers, which represents the workers.
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“UPS hasn't been proactive at all on the heat issue and that's going to have to change,” said Sean M. O'Brien, union general president.
The Teamsters issued a public letter last week outlining a series of steps they say UPS should take immediately to improve the safety of its drivers, taking the weather into account.
A United Parcel Service delivery driver unloads boxes on May 29, 2020 in the Brooklyn borough of New York.Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images
These include the provision of fans in all trucks (instead of being made to order), cooling neck towels, constant supplies of water and ice, and more breathable uniforms, as well as hiring more drivers to reduce the Workload.
“By refusing to apply these safety measures, the company is literally sending drivers out to die in the heat,” O'Brien said.
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In a statement, UPS said its drivers are trained to work outdoors and to handle the effects of hot weather and that the company regularly provides heat illness and injury prevention training to employees, as well as water and ice, as part of its "fresh solutions" program developed with regulators.
The company holds weekly safety meetings between workers and management and says it quickly addresses issues when they are brought to its attention.
"The health and safety of our employees is our top priority," said spokesman Matt O'Connor.
“We would never want our employees to continue to work to the point of risking their health or working in an unsafe manner,” he added.
increased tension
Heat illnesses, which in severe cases can lead to locked muscles, kidney failure and death, have long been a risk to UPS workers in the summer, and a point of contention between the company and its workers, as NBC News has reported.
The company's flagship trucks do not have air conditioning and some lack fans in the front.
Warehouse floors and docks where the company's shippers work can also become dangerously hot.
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The company has previously stated that it does not air-condition its fleet of delivery trucks because the frequent stops and the size of the vehicles would make air conditioning "ineffective."
The same goes for department stores with loading dock doors that are often left open.
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Workplace safety experts say it's hard to know how many of your workers are affected by the heat in any given year.
Although serious heat-related injuries are tracked by workplace safety regulatory agencies, these numbers are often poorly reported and only include hospitalizations.
Many of the workers who go to emergency rooms for heat illnesses, like Moczygemba, are not fully admitted and leave the hospital within hours, though it can take weeks for them to recover and return to work.
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Some UPS workers say the back of trucks, where they have to get in and out to pick up packages, can feel like a sauna.
Federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration inspectors have documented heat indexes of 126, and temperature readings taken by workers in their trucks in Arizona and Florida provided to NBC News show temperatures above 150 degrees.
UPS has taken steps to reduce heat in its trucks.
The company says it has installed ventilation systems to increase airflow, optimized roofs to reduce heat and insulation, and offers fans to drivers who request them.
“This job is physically demanding even without the sun,” said Hector Medina, who has delivered packages for UPS in the Tampa area for more than 20 years.
"There are times when you come home and your brain is dead from the heat."
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Medina noted that this summer seems hotter, but the company does not adjust its workload based on the high temperatures.
The risks faced by UPS workers and their fight for more protections from the company are emblematic of what workers around the world - including those in the delivery industry - are facing with rising temperatures, said Juley Fulcher, Worker health and safety advocate for Public Citizen, a nonprofit organization that lobbies for national heat protections.
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“They are in a particularly positive position to do something about it, because they are so structured,” he said.
Many of UPS's major competitors employ large numbers of contractors and have far less union representation, giving UPS's thousands of unionized employees more opportunity to speak out on worker safety issues.
This year, tensions between the company and the union have risen amid a steady stream of headlines about UPS drivers collapsing in the heat.
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In New York City, the local Teamsters union held a rally Thursday after they say four UPS employees on Long Island and Manhattan went to the emergency room within two days.
Local union president Vincent Perrone announced that he was taking the unusual step of withdrawing all union representatives from weekly safety meetings with the company.
“When the company decides to take the safety of our people seriously, I will consider reinstating the committee,” he wrote in a public letter.
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Some 1,500 miles (2,414 kilometers) away, as Oklahoma was battered by several straight weeks of record 100-plus days, a group of drivers from a UPS hub distributed thermometers in early July to collect the temperature readings from the front and rear of several dozen trucks.
On a 103ºF afternoon, they recorded 12 different readings between 110 and 127ºF, according to an NBC review of the data.
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"There are live animals in the back of my parcel truck, and I don't know if all those lizards are alive when they get to someone's house," said one of the drivers, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of reprisal.
heat deaths
Last August, Jorja Rodríguez lost her son, José Cruz Rodríguez, 23, just weeks after he started working for UPS.
On his second day driving a truck after finishing his training in Waco, Texas, José Rodríguez texted a supervisor saying he wasn't feeling well.
He talked to his mother about 7:30 pm, telling her that his shift was about to end, but he didn't show up.
He was found hours later, lying in a concrete culvert next to the downtown parking lot.
He was pronounced dead around 2 a.m.
OSHA later ruled that he had died of a heat-related illness and fined him $14,502, which UPS has contested.
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“This could have been prevented,” Rodríguez said.
“My son could still be here.
He might have ended up in the hospital for a few days from dehydration or something, but other than that, he might still have it,” he lamented.
She and her husband filed a wrongful death lawsuit against UPS, settling with the company a few months later.
David Michaels, an epidemiologist at George Washington University who led OSHA under former President Barack Obama, said heat can cause deadly conditions, including heart attacks, but an autopsy might make no mention of its effect.
"The number of worker heat deaths is seriously underestimated," Michaels said.
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With its current regulations, "OSHA's hands are tied," Michaels said.
"Only in the most extreme situations, when workers are killed or seriously injured, can OSHA issue a citation for heat exposure."
The agency's fines rarely exceed $15,000, and many end up being withdrawn after companies challenge them.
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OSHA has launched an effort to inspect more often for heat-related hazards and is working on creating specific protections for heat workers, but this will take years.
"With the climate crisis, summers are getting hotter, and if employers don't protect workers better, we're going to see more deaths," he said.
"Certainly UPS knows how to make sure workers are safe and can afford to protect them."
The issue came to the fore earlier this summer following the death of a young UPS employee.
In June, Esteban
Stevie
Chavez Jr., 24, died after collapsing in his UPS vehicle on a residential street in Pasadena, California, the day after his birthday.
The official cause of Chavez's death is still unknown.
The family is awaiting autopsy results, but his father, Esteban Chavez Sr., told NBC News, "I firmly believe it was the heat."
UPS issued a statement after his death, saying "we are deeply saddened" and "we are cooperating with the investigating authorities and are respectfully deferring questions about this incident to them."
"Maybe if she hadn't gone to work that day she would still be here," her stepmother Dominique Chavez said shortly after the funeral.