Fwd: Union Heads to Court Over Anthrax - AP, 31 Dec 2001

December 31, 2001

Union Heads to Court Over Anthrax

By RICHARD PYLE,

Associated Press

Monday December 31 8:29 AM ET

NEW YORK (AP) - Postal employees reported for work as usual at a mail

sorting

facility on Sunday despite the discovery of traces of anthrax on a machine

that previously had been infected and cleaned, postal officials said. A

union

official had urged the center's 5,500 employees not to return to work

until the extent of contamination was known.

``Our position is that they shouldn't go back until they get some clearer

understanding from the Centers for Disease Control (and Prevention) and the

Postal Service,'' , president of the New York Metro Area Postal

Union, said Sunday.

said the union would go back to court on Monday to seek a partial or

full shutdown of the facility pending thorough testing.

A judge denied a union request in October that the entire facility be

closed.

The affected sorting equipment was shut down for more cleaning and was

expected to be idled about a week, said Postal Service spokeswoman Diane

Todd.

She said the ``very negligible trace of anthrax'' found in the latest test

at

the Processing and Distribution Center might have been residue left

over from earlier contamination in October.

The center handles 12.5 million pieces of mail a day.

Traces of anthrax were found on five machines there in October and all five

were decontaminated. The machines were repeatedly retested, with no problems

until a Dec. 23 test on one machine came back positive, officials said.

Of the nation's 18 confirmed anthrax cases, five have died - two postal

workers in Washington, a Florida newspaper editor, an elderly Connecticut

woman and a New York hospital worker.

No anthrax cases have been confirmed among New York postal workers, but four

cases of non-lethal skin anthrax have been blamed on mail that passed

through

the center.

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