The International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC) has called for an independent investigation, led by rank-and-file workers, into the recent deaths of US Postal Service workers Nick Acker, 36, in the Detroit area and Russell Scruggs, Jr., 44, near Atlanta. We urge postal workers to come forward with information about safety conditions at their facilities by filling out the form below. All submissions will be kept anonymous.

Samantha is a postal worker in Illinois. She reached out to the World Socialist Web Site after reading about the deaths of Nick Acker and Russell Scruggs, Jr., two postal workers who died on the job in November 2025.

She is sharing her story with the WSWS to encourage other postal and logistics workers to come forward to provide evidence to the inquiry launched by the USPS Workers Rank-and-File Committee. The investigation has been launched by workers to expose the terrible conditions which management, with the support of the bureaucrats in the postal unions, are covering up.

After reporting persistent sexual harassment by a supervisor, she received thinly veiled death threats and was fired. She is now being further harassed for continuing to fight to expose the conditions that postal workers face on the job.

Samantha: Death is what causes people to pay attention. You can report things to your boss, you can report to higher levels, you can report to OIG [Office of Inspector General], you can report to OSHA [Occupational Safety and Health Administration], but nobody is going to listen to the worker unless there is a significant amount of damage, which is usually death.

There’s no one we can talk to. There was an OIG audit in January of 2024 that stated they were aware they were keeping bad management. There’s a whole audit on this, but what have they done to make any changes? Nothing. They only audit because they had to, because of Congress.

WSWS: Can you tell me your story from the beginning—when you started working at the post office and when the problems with harassment and retaliation began?

Samantha: I started working at the post office in 2015. My first real issue happened in 2022. I had a supervisor who harassed me about the clothes I was wearing, and I filed an EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) complaint. At that time, I had a new male postmaster.

The female supervisor claimed she was just following direct orders. She eventually moved to another office, but the problems didn’t stop. At the same time, the postmaster started showing signs of a drinking problem. I wasn’t the only one who noticed it.

One day, he left a carrier stranded on the side of the road so he could walk to a store. I had to call someone from another office to go get her. This was shortly after everyone had been talking about a carrier in Florida who died after being left on the side of the road and was attacked by dogs. We all talked about it because everyone knows if you have a bad postmaster, those fears are real. If your truck breaks down and you’re stuck out there, you’d better hope someone will come get you.

That was the point when I really started getting more deeply involved with the union and filing grievances. I became a steward and not long after that, I was promoted and became an area steward. I started fighting in other offices and quickly realized how systemic these problems really were. I started talking to my union about what I was seeing, and that’s when my union started turning against me.

They began saying that I was problematic and argumentative. To me, that was confusing because that was exactly why they wanted me as a steward in the first place—because I was willing to ask questions and push for the truth. But once I started questioning how they were handling things, suddenly I was the problem.

I eventually resigned as a steward, not because I didn’t want to help people, but because there was a case where it was implied to me that I could actually help more if I wasn’t in the union. So I resigned. After that, the union started doing the bare minimum for grievances filed by employees who had me to represent them, especially the people they knew I was close to. That made me feel terrible because those employees had nothing to do with what I was going through.

Shortly after I resigned, I received a cease-and-desist order telling me I was no longer allowed to email anyone with a usps.gov email address. My POOM [Post Office Operations Manager] emailed me and told me I had to stop emailing any postal employee.

I knew that was illegal. I honestly thought she was just angry and trying to scare me. But they followed it up with a letter of warning. I filed an EEO complaint over that discrimination. Then I was given a seven-day suspension, then a 14-day suspension, and then three separate notices of removal within that same year.

My first discipline came in January. By May, I was fired. It took them only five months after I resigned from the union to remove me. I fought for my job and eventually got it back. At the same time, I was still actively in an EEO case. They were moving to fire me before any of that had even been properly adjudicated.

During that same year, I formally reported my postmaster for sexual harassment. I did it through official channels because I didn’t feel safe reporting it directly to him. I reported it as part of a PDI [Pre Disciplinary Interview] so it would be documented with both management and union present. I also filed a 1767 safety form, an OSHA safety report. All of it was swept under the rug and kept inside the office. There was no investigation into him at all.

On the very day I reported him, he brought a weapon into the post office. He’s an avid deer hunter. OIG claimed the weapon had come through the mail and was damaged. That wasn’t true. I had text messages showing that the weapon belonged to a previous supervisor.

When I reported that back to OIG, they stopped contacting me. Nothing was ever followed up. In October of 2024, a threat assessment team came to the office. They tried to force me to work in the same building as my abuser. I refused. By that point, I was experiencing severe anxiety and panic. I was genuinely afraid of him.

When I later returned to work, nobody told me that I would be working alongside him again. Seeing him every day was overwhelming. I didn’t know if he was capable of killing me. You read the news. You see what happens when warnings are ignored.

WSWS: He had been sexually harassing you?

Samantha: Yes. He made comments about my body. He said my body was “different.” I took pictures of the other women in the office—only with their permission—because he was constantly writing me up for my clothes. One day I finally said, “I have pictures of the other women in this office dressed exactly the same way or with even less coverage. What is the problem?” He started yelling at me that I wasn’t allowed to take pictures.

Everything kept escalating. No matter what I did, it got worse. Eventually I had to go out on mental stress leave. When I returned from mental stress leave, he was gone for about six months. During that time, management did what they always do: They created a divide-and-conquer situation.

They picked certain employees and gave them special treatment. If those employees wanted overtime, they got it first. If they didn’t want to finish their routes, someone else would be assigned to do it.

There are a lot of perks that come with being someone who will write statements against other workers for management. I had already been dealing with issues from a few employees, and those same people eventually got together and made up a story that I had caused a wreck in the parking lot.

This happened after I had reported to higher levels earlier that morning that one of the people in their group had gotten into a physical altercation with a truck driver on the dock. Less than 10 minutes after I reported that incident, I got a call from an employee telling me that management was now accusing me of causing a collision in the parking lot.

When I obtained copies of the statements, they were completely inconsistent. My biggest shock was that when I turned in proof of the falsified statements, their main concern was how I got the photos, not that employees were falsifying statements. Eventually the investigation was dropped. After that, the supervisor and I continued arguing because I knew she was trying to get me fired.

A short time later, after I had been off work for two days, that same supervisor sent me out in a truck she knew had no brakes. She had been given a direct order the night before to send that vehicle out for repairs and not allow anyone to drive it because it needed to get fixed.

The carrier who had driven it both that day and the day before had already reported that there were no brakes. Her excuse afterward was that she “forgot” and sent me out in it anyway. She was placed on emergency placement after that.

At the very beginning of my route, my brakes failed completely. The emergency brake didn’t work either. I had to slow myself down by gliding the truck and literally grabbing mailboxes with my hand as I passed them. I was going slowly at that point, but it was terrifying.

WSWS: You could have been killed.

Samantha: I’m lucky I didn’t kill a family or construction workers. So many things could have gone wrong. Once this was discovered, it was finally taken seriously.

I went back to work and was doing well for a short time. Then two employees took me to civil court. They served me with papers and accused me of stalking them simply because I was showing up to work. At the same time, I was still in the middle of my EEO case. I tried to defend myself in court. I didn’t do everything correctly, but in the end, I won. Even the state’s attorney refused to file charges because there was nothing to support the claim. It was all thrown out in August.

After the civil case was thrown out, my postmaster came back to work right around that same time. Then one day I went into work and my supervisor was back in the building too. There was no warning, no conversation with me about what had happened, no explanation of what was found in any investigation. They just brought her back to work.

This woman had neglected me in a life-or-death situation. She sent me out in a truck with no brakes. You cannot say “I didn’t know” as an excuse when it comes to safety. But that was the standard they allowed. I even had an email from December of 2024 that proved she was told not to worry about any discipline because once the postmaster returned, he would remove everything on her record. And that’s exactly what happened.

I haven’t been able to return to work since then. I tried working Saturdays just so I could keep my insurance and get a few hours, but they took that away too. There is never a day when both of those people aren’t in the building.

The day my postmaster returned, I formally asked for reasonable accommodation. They didn’t give me one until October. Even then, they made it nearly impossible for me to participate in meetings. At one point, I tried to attend a meeting virtually from another post office over Zoom. I gave them medical documentation showing that this person was a trigger for my anxiety and panic attacks.

Their response was essentially, “If you don’t sit in the room with him, you can’t have the meeting.” Eventually, they scheduled another meeting and allowed me to attend with a supervisor I trusted. The whole process violated the Disability Act. They didn’t care. There is no one holding anyone accountable.

There has never been a real investigation into my postmaster at all. But I can tell you he has multiple EEOs in different offices for how he treats women. I know for a fact there are multiple EEOs pending right now from different women in that office.

As of December, the supervisor I trusted has left work because the postmaster will not allow her to stay in her office as he believes women are not allowed to have offices. The male postmaster had one of the clerks pile crap that was in the supply office up in front of that supervisor’s office. When she came in, he screamed at her to get out of the office. This is because of his feelings of constant misogyny toward the women in my office, not even a supervisor that is a woman can feel safe.

WSWS: What has been the impact of all of this on your daily life and on your family?

Samantha: It’s been horrible. I struggle to make ends meet now. I had to take another job because I’m not getting paid. I went off my medication for a while. When they first fired me, I stopped seeing my therapist because I couldn’t afford it anymore. I recently had to sell my car to make ends meet because that is how hard they make it for anyone financially to be able to speak out.

I know how close I’ve been to giving up. My daughter once left me a sticky note when she was seven years old saying she hoped I was okay. That was the first time I realized how much what I was going through at work was affecting my children. This kind of stress destroys families. It causes fights with the people you love. When you’re that alone, no one can fix it for you.

Being away from the post office has given me time to reevaluate everything. If anything, it’s made me even more determined to do something about this. My kids didn’t deserve to lose their mom emotionally for years while I was trying to fight this. The pain of watching other people suffer and being unable to fix it is incredibly isolating. It’s humiliating to feel completely dehumanized.

I gave up birthdays, holidays and time with my kids for this job. And in return, I was made to feel irrelevant, like if I disappeared tomorrow, they’d clean up my body and I’d never be spoken about again. No one should feel that way about going to work. We’re not in a Third World country. This is America. You’re supposed to be able to build a life. But you can’t even speak. That’s what’s so terrifying.

Whatever happens, I’m not backing down. People are going to die if this doesn’t stop. My kids will not grow up in a world where they believe they have to stay silent out of fear.

WSWS: Could you speak a bit more about the role of the unions in all of this?

Samantha: I had a district representative who would not allow me to file noncompliance without her permission. So if there were grievances in the office that were repeated, for example, a workplace harassment grievance, we couldn’t get the union to deter the behavior.

There is no real deterrent to management at the union level. When I questioned it, my cases would go to the next step above me, and suddenly rulings that clearly had precedent were overturned. Discipline would be upheld that shouldn’t have been. It stopped being about the worker involved, and it became about me not “knowing my place.”

Over time, unions changed because once people stop facing real hardship, they stop fighting the same way. Leadership becomes a lifelong career. Greed eventually sets in. Why fight for workers and file charges when you can just manage grievances and keep your well-paying full-time union job? Many union officials make far more than regular workers. Meanwhile, they never stop what the regular worker is enduring.

WSWS: What do you think are some of the broad historical issues behind these problems?

Samantha: Back between the mid-1980s and the mid-1990s, there were major changes happening in the postal service. Everything became about numbers and logistics. The people at the top didn’t care about any other problems. They needed those numbers to show Congress that they were doing the right thing. Then you had employees “going postal.” There were multiple deaths.

The mental abuse was through the roof. People committed suicide. People shot supervisors. We knew this. And it still took them several years to admit there were too many deaths, and Congress finally paid attention. That’s when the joint statement on workplace violence came out.

WSWS: What did you experience that you feel is universal to postal workers everywhere?

Samantha: What I learned is that what the post office does is make you feel crazy for speaking out about something you know is true. If you make too much noise, or your case is too big and they don’t want to deal with it, they shut you out. They turn people against you. They make you out to be unstable. That makes you question yourself and your own decisions.

They intentionally make you feel hopeless so they can break you down. That’s why they don’t talk about suicide at my job. The manipulation is what drives people to that point. I’m here to tell people I hope they don’t give up. I know how hard it is. It’s exhausting to repeat your story and be told over and over that you’re crazy and it’s not happening. They hide everything in paperwork and use it to erase you until you either leave or break down completely. People need to know they can speak out and that there is a safe place to do it. The silence right now is unhealthy. It’s extreme mental abuse.

WSWS: When you say people should be allowed to talk about this, in our view the way workers can do that is by forming rank-and-file committees and publishing their stories. What do you think is the best way for workers to speak out?

Samantha: I think rank-and-file committees are necessary. People have been systematically scared to speak out so it’s hard to get people to talk. We have to make this loud enough that people understand they are protected.

These committees have to find ways for people to report anonymously. In my office, I used to report things I saw happening to other women and other employees. I was told that unless I gave names, nothing could be done. And unless those people spoke for themselves, they couldn’t be helped. That’s not right.

That’s why rank-and-file committees matter. Workers need independent teams that can step in and say, “No, this is not okay.” Yes, we can still go through the NLRB, but in the current political climate, watchdog agencies are being weakened. If you remove watchdog agencies, it’s because you have something to hide. Something has to change, because right now there are just going to be more deaths until enough people are affected that they finally speak out.