Driver Chris Begley’s death in August underscores a list of alleged heat-related incidents across Texas
Neysa Lambeth was in Florida caring for her ailing father on 23 August 2023 when she received a call from her husband, Chris Begley, who had worked as a UPS driver for 28 years in Texas.
Begley, 57, had collapsed from the heat while delivering packages. Lambeth said a manager picked him up and took him home to recover. He had fallen ill a couple of times from the heat over the previous two years, Lambeth said, and she had picked him up from the UPS service center on those occasions.
“This time I wasn’t home, and so instead of taking him to the hospital or dialling 911, they took him home to an empty house and left him,” said Lambeth.
Typically those box style UPS trucks don’t have AC.
Of course not. That would cost money.
Requiring new trucks to have AC was apparently the number 1 sticking point in their Unions new contract. Management fought it tooth and nail, but the union got it.
In response, UPS has simply not bought any new trucks in almost a year. Of the 100,000 UPS trucks, the ones with AC count in the “hundreds” by UPS executives own admissions.
That shouldn’t even be on the union to negotiate; it ought to be on OSHA to decree.
With Chevron gutted, it needs to be an explicit federal law.