HAULING UPS'S FREIGHT

By John Greenwald

KAREN DAWSON FELT HER back pop as she tried to lift a package in August 1994 from the top shelf of her United Parcel Service truck in Atlanta. Six months earlier, the 85-lb. parcel wouldn't have been there: it was on the truck only because UPS had raised its weight limit on such delivery parcels from 70 lbs. to 150 lbs. in February 1994. Dawson, 37, underwent surgery for a ruptured disk but has been disabled ever since. Today she blames the company for jacking up the weight limit beyond what workers had learned to handle with comfort. "I wouldn't have been injured otherwise," she says.

The weight-limit increase helped boost profits and productivity at UPS, known as Big Brown for its ubiquitous chocolate-colored delivery trucks. With 335,000 employees, UPS is the world's largest package-delivery service (1994 sales: $19.5 billion). It is also known as a hard-driving company with a worker injury rate about 25% higher than the industry average. The privately held Atlanta company enjoys another distinction: it is the No. 1 corporate giver to congressional election races. UPS poured $2.6 million into House and Senate campaigns in 1993 and 1994 and kicked in nearly $500,000 more in the first seven months of 1995. Now UPS may be after its biggest trophy ever. It is leading a corporate charge to gut enforcement programs at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, created by Congress in 1970 to protect workers from injuries on the job.

UPS is lobbying hard for bills proposed by Republican Representative Cass Ballenger of North Carolina and New Hampshire Republican Senator Judd Gregg that would curb OSHA's power to issue citations and fines for infractions of hundreds of rules and regulations. The sweeping change would transform the agency from a watchdog on safety matters to a toothless "adviser" to industry. Ballenger's measure has picked up 155 co-sponsors and, with some tinkering, could pass the House this spring. As it happens, Ballenger got $10,000 from UPS for his 1994 election race. Gregg, who contends that "OSHA has developed a well-earned reputation for overregulation and a lack of common sense," got a $1,000 contribution from UPS in the first half of 1995.

No employer has been a more in-your-face foe of OSHA than UPS. Last month the company joined a coalition of 250 business and trade groups that stifled OSHA's attempts to develop a standard aimed at reducing the incidence of conditions like carpal-tunnel syndrome, an inflammatory wrist ailment triggered by repetitive motion. The victory was won even before the agency had a chance to issue the proposed standards for discussion. UPS called the regulations "intrusive, expensive [and] paperwork producing" in an influential letter to House members. The Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan research group that monitored the battle, pointed to UPS's central role in fending off the standards.

Joseph Dear, the Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health, calls the UPS challenge to OSHA " lobbying at its worst." Nonsense, rebuts Ken Sternad, a UPS spokesman. Political fund giving "is the practice in Washington. Not to participate would be highly irresponsible." Kenneth Holland, a University of Memphis political scientist, concurs: "It makes perfect sense if you are in an industry like this one that is heavily affected by federal regulation. Obviously, you have a tremendous incentive to contribute as much as you can."

Sternad readily agrees that "we are a demanding company, and our people work very hard." Partly for that reason, he says, UPS has invested $1 billion on safety equipment and worker-training programs over the past three years. But UPS still had an injury rate of 11.5 for every 100 workers in 1995, in contrast to a national average for transportation companies of about 9 per 100 workers. UPS calls such comparisons misleading because its parcels tend to be larger and heavier than the documents that rivals like Federal Express typically deliver. According to workers like Karen Dawson, that is precisely the point.

--Reported by Melissa August/Washington and Adam Cohen/Atlanta

With reporting by MELISSA AUGUST/WASHINGTON AND ADAM COHEN/ATLANTA