A Grand Alliance Interview with Rebecca L. Reindel

In this special safety-focused issue of The American Postal Worker, A Grand Alliance spoke with Occupational Safety and Health Director Rebecca L. Reindel from one of our most prominent member organizations, the AFL-CIO.

Rebecca is from a union family in Cleveland, OH. Her father is a retired pipefitter/welder, and her mother is a retired city employee. Rebecca’s aunt led a non-profit that trained women for jobs in the trades. She is a first-generation college student and holds a graduate degree in public health.

Tell us about the AFL-CIO’s work on safety.

Our work strengthens agency standards like the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and laws Congress passes to protect workers’ health and safety on the job. We use workers’ experiences, research, and other evidence to negotiate with policymakers, develop advocacy materials, and testify on behalf of working people. We educate decision-makers on effective approaches.

We also help all of our unions, including APWU, connect these issues with the same issues they’re working on for their members through bargaining, mobilizing, and training.

Each year, the labor movement commemorates Workers’ Memorial Day, and we develop the materials that unions order and use to plan their own events.

What are the most common health and safety problems that workers in all industries face?

Workers face major risks from chemical exposures, heat exposures, infectious disease exposures, workplace violence, and repetitive motion that leads to musculoskeletal disorders and chronic pain. Burnout is also very common. These issues are all preventable when effective approaches are used.

Many postal workers face hostile management, making the workplace even more dangerous. Is that common?

Bullying and hostility are significant problems at work. Not only is it a broad labor issue, but it is also a health and safety issue. These issues can lead to anxiety, depression, burnout, and physical health problems. It is often a gradual process that can involve unreasonable workloads, constant unfair criticism, intimidation, and retaliation.

Besides the postal industry, we see it in health care and other industries. Training, grievances, and prevention measures can help identify and address this institutionalized behavior.

Reducing regulations has been a priority of the current White House, such as the draft OSHA heat injury and illness prevention standard. What can you tell us about that draft rule and what might happen to it?

The White House has pushed a massive deregulatory agenda that is weakening and removing regulations to benefit corporate interests, not workers. Many proposed deregulations attack health and safety protections, like removing OSHA coverage for some workers and lighting requirements at construction sites.

While heat isn’t an existing federal regulation, OSHA issued a heat proposal in 2024. There has been strong support for it from workers and experts, but significant pushback from companies. Now companies want the agency to adopt a very weak standard so they wouldn’t have to change their practices, but could show they’re following the law. OSHA also weakened its heat enforcement program from 2022 to issue fewer citations and just talk to employers.

If you could introduce a new law to make every workplace safer, what would it be?

There is a comprehensive bill, called the Protecting America’s Workers Act (H.R.3036), which would reform OSHA. It would really change the game for workers to be able to use OSHA as a stronger tool, overall.

Winning strong regulations and fighting back against deregulation to protect workers takes a long time and hard work by union members. But when we win, it has a huge impact on people’s lives every day.