In today’s News and Commentary, postal workers demand an investigation into conditions at an Atlanta distribution center following employee deaths, and the University of Chicago Press Workers vote to unionize.

The national leadership of the American Postal Workers’ Union has called for an investigation into the emergency preparation conditions at an Atlanta distribution center. Since the Atlanta Regional Processing and Distribution Center opened in Palmetto in 2024, four workers have died of medical emergencies. The U.S. Postal Service has responded to the union’s call in a written statement, emphasizing that the deaths were due to natural causes rather than workplace incidents, and that the service has worked to improve conditions by installing new emergency phones and training employees in CPR. Jonathan Smith, national president of the APWU, said that 27 emergency phones are “not enough to adequately cover this million-square-foot facility.” The union has further identified several issues with emergency preparation, including “poor cell phone service inside the building, a lack of automated external defibrillators (AEDs) and the absence of trained emergency responders on every shift.” The same distribution facility was the center of an investigation led by Senator Jon Ossoff due to operational problems. 

On Wednesday, the University of Chicago Press Workers Guild voted to unionize. 89 percent of voters were in favor of union representation, making the 134 press employees the largest unit in the Chicago News Guild. The workers organized with Local 34071 of the NewsGuild-CWA, and launched a drive in May after a supermajority of employees signed authorization cards. The University of Chicago press is one of the largest university presses in the United States. The union has “called for fair wages, protections from artificial intelligence and better work conditions,” as well as a response to spending limitations and reduced hiring caused by the university’s budget crisis. The represented employees will include administrative and IT workers as well as employees within the press’ books and journals and distribution services divisions. The press was only the second book publisher in two days to unionize, as over 600 workers in the Hachette Book Group, the third-largest trade publisher in the United States, unionized with the Washington-Baltimore-News Guild on Tuesday.