Good afternoon, Arbitrators Goldberg, Clauss, and Dufek. I have requested and been provided the opportunity to address the panel in fulfilling my constitutional obligations to speak on behalf of the members who will be affected by the decision of the panel.

For three long months, you have patiently heard the evidence presented by counsel and an array of witnesses supporting the claims of the opposing sides.

You have heard from panels of employees who have explained what they do, and the difficulties of their tasks.
Other witnesses have described their areas of expertise and knowledge, and the attorneys have advanced the theories most favorable to the desired outcome.

Lost in all of these presentations has been the image of who are these employees who have joined together to make the demands. I hope to provide some insight into who they are and why they seek appreciation for the work that they perform.

The postal employees who I am privileged to represent are your brothers and sisters, your cousins and neighbors. They are Americans, and they take pride in their service. Their work is an important part of their life, and an important part of who they are.
These employees are among the most intelligent group of blue-collar workers in the world. Each has passed the entrance examination with a score sufficiently high for them to be selected from a substantial group of other applicants.

For every employee hired, there are hundreds who scored lower on the test and were not hired, or had their hiring deferred. I challenge any major employer of blue-collar workers to match the intelligence level of postal employees, and they apply this intelligence in the performance of their job.

These employees hold college degrees in a variety of disciplines, and many selected postal employment for reasons totally unrelated to salary, benefits, or type of employment. They bring their intelligence and energy to the task of postal services, and our nation is the beneficiary.

The dedication of these workers has been put to the ultimate test over the past eight weeks. The actions of a terrorist in distributing anthrax through the mail has exposed these employees to serious illness. In fact, as you know, two of our members have died, many hospitalized, and hundreds of thousands terrorized.

If the face of this terror, just yesterday I had the privilege to visit with one of those heroes who, to date, has survived the terrors of inhalations anthrax infection, and I and Cliff Guffey, who accompanied me, marveled at the spirit of he and his wife as they expressed their pride in being postal employees.

He informed me during that visit that the hospital is taking his blood from his lungs and they're making serum from it, and it has a value throughout the world today of approximately $30,000 as the science and medical personnel throughout the world are trying to find a serum to treat inhalation anthrax.

I am extremely proud of the reaction of our union and of the postal workers it represents. Hundreds of mail rooms throughout the country sealed their doors. Mail rooms in government offices, in the House, the Senate, and the Supreme Court were closed in response to the threat of anthrax.

The Postal Service did not close. Postal workers did not abandon their work in the face of this terror; and in response, the Postal Service has proposed to reduce the health benefits of these workers.

I have been unable to be present throughout these hearings because I've been meeting with the postmaster general and his staff on a daily basis, attempting to ensure that the critical business of our nation was not damaged and to provide security to the employees.
I and other union leaders are well aware of our obligations to the Postal Service and to our country, and we are proud that mail services have continued.

We have struggled to create a protocol throughout this three-week period, and today it was finalized. We have but a single issue in disagreement, and that is whether or not APWU represented employees will work in contaminated buildings, a serious issue.

When CDC or one of the contracting companies identifies a contamination in the Postal Service, they bring in HAZMAT-trained employees guarded in protective suites on the work floor with the employees I represent, who are protected only by masks and gloves, and in their midst are these individuals with full-body armor, their own air supply, working in the same environment that the employees represented here today are working in with mere masks and gloves.

You have heard the explanations of the wonderful technology now employed to perform postal tasks, but Brentwood and Trenton are prime examples of the value of these dedicated employees.

These wonder machines sit idly in those facilities, not processing a single piece of America’s mail and not conducting a single retail transaction without the direct intervention of these invaluable employees.

This hearing is not a forum for competing consultants or clever theories. It is about theories. It is about the dignity and respect afforded these employees by their employer.

This hearing is about how these employees feel about their contribution to postal service and their individual perception of the esteem in which they are held.

We are sensitive to the transfer of our cause to the American public, but it has been extremely difficult to listen to testimony and arguments portraying postal employees as overpaid and underworked while we work every day to ensure that they would not be killed or poisoned on duty.

It would been easy for me and other union leaders to have joined in the chorus that the Postal Service was to blame for the anthrax exposures.

If there is any doubt, one has but to read the news stories or watch TV report of other leaders within my union who strongly believe that postal services should be shut down, as was done in the airline industry. One famous line was that they tested the dogs first.
I resisted , under the circumstances, and attempted to raise the employees’ level of confidence.

I have established a hotline that our members could call in and get the latest information about anthrax and the efforts of postal management and their union to address it. 

I've had weekly teleconferences participated in by tens of thousands of our members, and we have updated our web site on a regular basis.

Last week I met with postal leaders from Europe, and they informed me, because of the lack of information throughout the world about anthrax, that postal facilities, postal regimes throughout the world are going to our web site to get the latest information about the exposure that they fear their employees and citizens might be exposed to in the future.

I come before you today, on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of dedicated employees, to announce that they deserve better. We have come a long way, and we will not return to the past.

During the period of my employment, African American postal workers were treated differently in every respect. It was not that long ago that the union that I now head was separated - - one back, one white.

I could not apply my seniority to attain an assignment in the public eye, and women were not hired as postal employees, as a matter of public policy. Testimony presented by the Postal Service in these hearings reflects a desire to return to those dark days. These employees will not be penalized for eradicating an unfair and inhumane system.

I represent human beings, individuals who have feelings of worth and pride, and who yearn to believe that they are appreciated. They are now paid less than other postal employees whom they know, and whom the Postal Service has admitted perform lesser work.
Circumstances prevented the visit of this panel to a worksite. And let me share with you a situation that occurred just several weeks ago.

In our 10 o'clock meeting, I informed the postmaster general, his staff, and the other union presidents that I intended to visit the Capitol Heights facility that is processing the overflow from Brentwood.

I intended to visit that facility because I had members that were working there, and I did not intend to wear a mask or gloves, because I knew that the members I represented likewise did not have masks or gloves.

And in the presence of CDC and several physicians that were present at the meeting, I asked what was my risk? How much would I be expose by going to those facilities?

After some 15 or 20 seconds of silence and several minutes beyond that where people were shifting uncomfortably in their seats, it became clear to me that all the professional were telling me that, Bill Burrus, perhaps your life is more important that of those employees in those facilities, and perhaps you should not go. Perhaps you should not be exposed to the possibility of anthrax exposure in the Capitol Heights facility.

It was all right for the thousands of employees that are working there every day, with the limited knowledge that we have in our society and throughout the world.

What is the exposure level? Was the three letters the only source of the contamination that was spread throughout our country? 

What is the treatment?

We presently have 18,000 employees, most represented by our contract, who are presently on Cipro. The medical community has no knowledge of the downstream effect of Cipro. It not only arrests Anthrax. It also arrests other parts of the body, some parts of the body that counteract bad things in the body.

And for the next decade or more, the medical community will be reviewing the trials that have been undertaken on the employees I represent. They will be writing journals about the effect of Cipro on a large population, the recovery from anthrax, on the two of my brothers that have been killed.

And one of the most poignant discussions I was involved in was the discussion that transpired between the authorities and the families of the deceased employees.

The preference was cremation, because they did not know the long-term effect of interring a body with anthrax in the bloodstream. They didn't know the contamination that might follow for that environment. The family refused, so they sealed the basket.

I have 380,000 employees that are exposed to that every day. We are not providing any protection beyond psychological. We give them masks and gloves as through that is a panacea, but it provides absolutely no protection.

These employees are risking their life each and every moment, each and every hour, in fear that the next letter they touch may be the 
letter that is the fourth letter that contains anthrax.

And every evening when I go to bed, every time the phone rings, it’s in fear that it’s a call from the postmaster general saying there’s a letter in Chicago, or there’s’s a letter in L.A. meaning that it’s spread beyond the East Coast and it has now infected our entire system.

Circumstances prevented the visit of this panel to work site so that you could visibly see the contribution of these employees who, at this very minute, are at work in 38,000 facilities, moving America’s mail, and these employees yearn to be appreciated.
I date not predict the outcome of these hearings, but as the elected leader of these employees, we will achieve dignity and respect, and we will do whatever is necessary to achieve that goal.

Thank you for your patience. Thank you for your consideration of my remarks, as well as our claim for decency and respect for 380,000 employees that put their life on the line every day as they perform America’s work.

Thank you.