Postal Service to investigate workplace violence

The U.S. Postal Service is creating a commission that will investigate violence and safety issues in the postal workplace, Postmaster General William Henderson said Tuesday.

The five-member panel will report to Henderson on work-related stress, substance abuse and the workplace environment. Joseph Califano Jr., former Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, and current president of the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, will chair the commission.

"Workplace violence remains an urgent threat to employees in every company and organization in America," Henderson said. "No reasonable employer can ignore that reality." There were 856 workplace homicides in the country in 1997, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The commission's report will detail steps the Postal Service can take to ensure that its 38,000 post offices and related facilities are safe places to work.

"Our commission hopes to make the U.S. Postal Service the national model for workplace safety and security," Califano said.

The day of Henderson's announcement, an armed postal worker in Riverside, Calif., who once worked for the city, took the mayor and two council members hostage and waged a gun battle with police in which five people, including the postal worker, were wounded.