Researchers explore how people respond to wildfire smoke

Peer-Reviewed Publication

STANFORD UNIVERSITY

As wildfires become commonplace in the western U.S. and around the world, checking the daily air quality warning has become as routine as checking the weather. But what people do with that data – whether it drives them to slip on a mask before stepping outside or seal up their homes against smoke – is not always straightforward or rational, according to new Stanford research.

In a case study of Northern California residents, Stanford researchers explored the psychological factors and social processes that drive responses to wildfire smoke. The research, which ultimately aims to uncover approaches for helping people better protect themselves, shows that social norms and social support are essential for understanding protective health actions during wildfire smoke events. The findings appeared this month in the journal Climate Risk Management.

“It’s important to understand how people behave so that public health communications professionals can potentially intervene and promote safer behavior that mitigates risk,” said lead study author Francisca Santana, a PhD student in the Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources (E-IPER). “This kind of qualitative work is a first step so that we can learn how people are using information and interacting to make decisions. We can then look at where there might be leverage points or opportunities to promote more protective behavior.”

Exposure to wildfire smoke can irritate the lungs, cause inflammation, impact the immune system and increase susceptibility to lung infections, including the virus that causes COVID-19, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. While other studies have examined how people respond to evacuation orders, little has been done to understand what’s happening with wildfire smoke exposure if people don’t – or can’t – leave the area, according to senior study author Gabrielle Wong-Parodi, an assistant professor of Earth system science at Stanford’s School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences (Stanford Earth).

“It resonated with me, the things that people were doing to try to protect themselves in the absence of access to effective ways to reduce their wildfire smoke exposure,” Wong-Parodi said, referring to a resident who breathed through a wet bandana in an attempt to filter out toxic smoke particles. “It’s urgent that we come up with strategies that are realistic for what people are going through.”

Study authors Santana and David Gonzalez, who worked on the study as a PhD student at Stanford, interviewed residents across age, race and income demographics who were affected by wildfire smoke from the 2018 Camp Fire that destroyed Paradise, California, and subsequent fires in 2019 in Fresno, Santa Clara and Sacramento counties.

They found that individuals responded to wildfire smoke events in three main ways: interpreting information together, protecting vulnerable others and questioning protective actions. Their responses were influenced not only by the Air Quality Index (AQI) but also by what they were personally experiencing – whether they smelled, saw or tasted smoke in the air.

Just as important were the social factors at play, the researchers found. “Social norms and social support were really influencing how people chose to act on their perceptions of threat,” Santana said. “For example, a lot of people talked about observing others wearing masks, and in some cases that observation was enough for them to act by wearing a mask themselves.”

Their discussions revealed that the shared rules or standards of behavior within a social group – social norms – were a common pathway driving behavior change, in addition to the act of assisting or comforting others within your social group – social support.

“There were only a handful of people who described looking at the AQI and then changing their behavior based on just that – it was almost always a conversation they were having with one another,” Santana said. “It was very much a social exercise of making sense of limited information or information that was not at the right scale for their community.”

The study provides a framework for better understanding wildfire smoke responses by examining social processes while acknowledging that cultural and political contexts, as well as factors like demographics, health status and previous exposure to smoke and air pollution, may also influence individual behaviors.

In the western U.S., climate change has contributed to the risk and extent of wildfires, bringing smoke to regions like the Bay Area, which has historically been less affected than the rest of the state. In some cases, the researchers found that residents were unable to protect themselves because they couldn’t access N95 masks or air purifiers or properly seal their homes.

“This research is also important for epidemiologists trying to understand how wildfire smoke affects health,” said Gonzalez, who is now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Berkeley. “This can help us to look at disparities in who’s exposed to smoke and whether that leads to poorer health for some populations.”

As these events become more common, there could be an opportunity to find policy synergies that help prepare communities for future smoke events, according to the co-authors. For example, programs that are designed to improve household comfort and increase energy efficiency could also include measures to reduce smoke intrusion during wildfire smoke events, Wong-Parodi suggested.

Some of the interviews revealed that residents simply didn’t know what to do while experiencing a novel extreme event. But even that revealed how processing uncertainty is a social exercise, not just a cognitive one.

“This piece shows that social norms may be an effective lever for encouraging the pro-health change that we’d like to see,” Wong-Parodi said. “That is actually a really promising sign for thinking about how to adapt and mitigate our risk as we’re facing increasing threats from climate change.”

###

Wong-Parodi is also a center fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. Stanford research coordinator Stephanie Fischer, BS, BA ’19, and Earth systems master’s student Jessica Mi helped conduct interviews for the study.

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JOURNAL

Climate Risk Management

DOI

10.1016/j.crm.2021.100351 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Case study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Psychological factors and social processes influencing wildfire smoke protective behavior: Insights from a case study in Northern California

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

12-Aug-2021

Wildfire near Penticton, B.C. balloons to 200 hectares, marches towards luxury development

The Skaha Creek wildfire, burning southwest of Penticton, B.C., crested the ridge and crept down the mountainside on Sunday night, threatening a luxury hillside residential development.

© Courtesy: Glenn Norton The 100 hectare Skaha Creek wildfire is burning directly above the luxury Skaha Hills development west of Penticton, B.C.

The wildfire, first discovered on Aug. 28, was described by locals as looking like a volcano had erupted as bright orange flames illuminated the night sky.

Read more: Cooler temperatures help slow growth of Skaha Creek wildfire near Penticton, B.C.

Plumes of smoke could be seen billowing from large swaths of the mountainside above Penticton Regional Airport (YYF) on Monday morning.

The blaze is now highly visible from the entire City of Penticton, Highway 97 and surrounding communities. It is 212 hectares in size and is believed to be human-caused.

No evacuation alerts or orders have been issued, though some residents living in the Skaha Hills development directly below the wildfire are packing up and preparing to leave if conditions deteriorate.

The Skaha Creek wildfire is being managed as part of the Okanagan complex, lead by an incident management team.

Read more: More military crews join B.C. wildfire fight

Fire information officer Roslyn Johnson said crews will focus their efforts on the east flank of the fire, which is closest to homes, with direct attack operations to contain all spot fires across Skaha Creek Road.

"Heavy equipment will work to build an indirect line on the west and north flanks," Johnson said.

"There are two heavy and two medium helicopters working the fire today. Skimmers and air tankers will continue to support the incident, if necessary."

An aerial assault hammered the vigorous surface fire over the past two days, with five helicopters, nine skimmers and three air tankers supporting ground crews on Sunday.

Read more: Volunteers begin sifting through ashes of Lytton, B.C. fire for family heirlooms

"The skimmers were providing cooling action and air tankers were putting down lines of retardant," Johnson said.

"Heavy equipment worked along the west flank constructing guard and crews worked using direct attack method along the east flank."

The City of Penticton issued a statement on Sunday warning that firefighting response efforts may impact operations at the nearby Penticton airport.

Passengers are advised to check yyf.penticton.ca for current flight information.

Recreational boaters on Skaha and Okanagan Lakes are also asked to stay close to shore to allow aircraft responding to the nearby wildfire to collect lake water.

Cooler conditions are lowering the intensity of the fire, with temperatures forecasted to be in the low 20's for much of the week, a far cry from the high 30 C and low 40 C that fuelled B.C.'s brutal wildfire season earlier this summer.

Read more: Okanagan residents urged to secure garbage due to hungry bears displaced by wildfires

Winds could gust to 40 kilometers per hour on Monday evening, according to Environment Canada.

A special air quality statement has been issued for the Okanagan Valley due to wildfire smoke.

As of Sunday, there are 232 active wildfires burning in B.C. Nearly 4,000 properties across the province remain under an evacuation order, and 6,255 properties are on alert.

Since the start of the 2021 fire season, 1,558 wildfires have scorched 864,665 hectares of earth.

Nearly 3,000 firefighters are on the front lines, assisted by 443 out-of-province firefighters and 110 helicopters and airplanes.

B.C. wildfires a ‘wake-up call’ to return to Indigenous-led fire management

Traditional burns offer a way to protect the land, sustain Indigenous cultural practices and unite two very different worldviews, say fire experts.

“Fire is not bad, fire is a life bringer, and the syilx people have lived in harmony with the land in a reciprocal relationship since time immemorial,” says sxʷuxʷiyaʔ, the Penticton Indian Band’s project manager for the Natural Resource Department.

sxʷuxʷiyaʔ manages traditional burns in and around snpink’tn (Penticton), in the southern Interior of B.C. on unceded syilx territory.

“Fire is a tool our people have used for thousands and thousands of years to manage our timxw [life force], our lands, our animals, our berries,” says sxʷuxʷiyaʔ.

“If you plan, as our people have done — where to burn, when to burn and what to burn — fire actually replenishes the land, replenishes our food source, to keep the land healthy.”

In recent months, wildfires have been moving rapidly through the territory. And Kira Hoffman says she sees these fires as a “wake-up call” to settlers to listen to, learn from and work with Indigenous fire management practices.

She’s a post-doctoral researcher with the University of British Columbia’s Faculty of Forestry.

“One of the things I find really frustrating right now is many agencies saying they don’t have the expertise to engage in more controlled fire on the landscape at the scale we need.

“I think that the big issue is that they are not considering the relevant experience and knowledge of Indigenous Peoples, and the lifelong practice of understanding fire, and being taught fire, and how many ways you can use fire,” she says.

“There are so many examples where people are successfully living with fire in fire-dependent landscapes, because they are a fire-dependent culture and without it, it can totally erode a landscape.”

sxʷuxʷiyaʔ says he knows “firsthand what we can do when we come together and work together.”

“Whenever we get referrals for prescripted fuel reduction burns or prescribed burns we inform B.C. Wildfire Services [BCWS] that this is syilx territory and we manage our land with fire and we have a very developed process for burn prescriptions, fuel reductions, and fuel modifications and treatment,” he says.

“We [then] lead the project collaboratively because that’s our resources, that’s our timxw.”

syilx Peoples have long been practicing traditional burning protocols following syilx scientific methodologies.

Burns were systematic and strategic, he explains.

“We didn’t just start a fire and let it burn. It was selectively burned, based on multiple values [such as] … berry production … animal population … disease, grasslands, diseased trees.

“And it was not burned every single year. It was one area that was burned, [then] another area burned, and you wouldn’t return to the same area until after quite some time. It might be after four years, or after 20 years. It was all dependent on the landscape.”

Protocols around traditional burning are deeply embedded in the captikw, the oral storytelling laws that guide the values and ethics of the syilx people.

“We have names for everything when it comes to doing burns,” says sxʷuxʷiyaʔ.

And while the practice is still very active in the snpink’tn area of the syilx territory, colonial governments have made it difficult to carry out, he says.

“The Canadian government has been stifling our efforts to manage our land properly — giving people fines for lighting fires, setting up private properties [and] provincial parks, and stopping us from managing our landscapes with fire.

“I believe, and, because of my training of writing fire prescriptions with a syilx lens on it, that the wildfires we are experiencing today are a product of mismanagement of lands by Canada, and by extension, of course, the province of B.C.,” he says.

As a researcher, Hoffman has been studying pyro-diversity, the role of traditional burns in sustaining the land prior to colonization, and the kind of impacts these burns could have on the land today.

She says her team at UBC has reviewed “a thousand papers” in an effort to better understand “the relationship between biodiversity and controlled burning.”

They’ve found that “it didn’t matter if it was a tundra or a savanna grassland, if you used fire and you used it regularly for cultural purposes, it benefited biodiversity.”

And it’s not just in papers that she’s seen the positive impacts of cultural burns, says Hoffman, who says she worked as a B.C. wildfire fighter for many years prior to becoming a researcher.

“When I’m out on the land, I can see where cultural burnings have happened on the landscape,” she says.

“A south-facing slope, for instance, that has more berries than what should be there. It’s just the highest density of huckleberries, and it’s obvious it’s a cultural burning area … And you can dig down in the soil and see the char, or you can go around and see the fire scars in those meadows.”

This healthy abundance of berry growth is one of the many markers of a healthy thriving ecosystem, she says.

“It’s just really clear that land was managed for so long by people, and people who have unbelievable expertise in fire.”

Hoffman points out that there is a significant difference between what colonial institutions often describe as “prescribed burns” and traditional or cultural burns practiced by Indigenous Peoples.

“The difference between prescribed burning and cultural burning is a very specific community practice. So who does the burning, where the burning is done, and how it’s done is very different,” she says.

What’s interesting is the way these two systems of knowledge are speaking to each other right now, she says.

“The traditional knowledge and [contemporary] fire knowledge … Coming out of Indigenous communities is the same as what the [Western] scientists are saying, too — which is we need more fire on the land. Whether that’s prescribed fire or cultural burning, or best case scenario both.”

“I would really like to see Indigenous-led fire programs,” she adds. “[sqilxw] know how a fire is going to burn. They know when the rains are going to come based on what’s going on. So I’m always totally gobsmacked when I hear there isn’t enough fire knowledge [by governing agencies] to do controlled burning.”

sxʷuxʷiyaʔ agrees.

“We have thousands of years of knowledge and experience with it, and our resources and knowledge are being seriously underutilized and underfunded,” he says.

Tim Lezard is a council member for the Penticton Indian Band, based in Snpink’tn. He says in his community, traditional burning is crucial.

“Like any tradition, it is birthed out of necessity,” he says, adding that syilx Peoples knew that the health of the land meant the health of the people.

Lezard’s grandmother, Annie Kruger (nee George), was a firekeeper in their family, meaning she held the knowledge around when, where and how to start traditional burns.

“She talked a lot about the berry bushes, like the black caps. She would go burn those, and raspberries, and burn those patches,” he says.

“My dad and uncles would go along the creekside to burn, [and] my grandpa would make them clean up around the creeks and burn up any dead plants,” he says.

“My grandma would always stress you must always have an intention when you first start [a] fire, and ask yourself: ‘What is the intention here?’

Lezard says the provincial government could be spending less on fire suppression and more on proactive measures through fuel management — as his family has done for generations.

“A lot of it is based on fear from colonizers. They came here and colonized our people and they saw our resources as money rather than being part of the land. That’s a big part of it is colonizers’ mentality is more around fire suppression.”

The BCWS should be working with and learning from sqilxw Peoples, says Lezard.

“Our intentions are both going in the same direction,” he says. “Whether it’s quantifiable through western science or … Indigenous science, there will be an overlap and an agreement.”

sxʷuxʷiyaʔ says that it’s possible to have different governing bodies working together to ensure cultural burns are happening in a good way while respecting syilx values and honouring shared intentions.

“They provide resources, we take the lead, but we collaborate,” he says.

“We go out at their resourcing with our knowledge keepers, our burn specialists, and then we write our prescription and what we do is merge them, so that a burn plan can move forward with our [sqilxw] values and our interests at the forefront of the decision making.”

Kelsie Kilawna, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, The Discourse

THEY WORK THEY ARE EFFECTIVE

 Alberta harm reduction advocates call on province to stop 'unjust assault' on supervised consumption sites

UCP CAN'T STAND THAT

Anna Junker 

© Provided by Edmonton Journal 

The Safeworks supervised consumption site at the Sheldon M. Chumir Health Centre is shown in Calgary on Thursday, May 27, 2021. It is set for closure once the province finds locations for two new drug sites in the city.

A coalition of Albertans promoting harm reduction is calling on the provincial government to stop the “unjust assault” on services that help prevent overdoses.

Ahead of International Overdose Awareness Day on Tuesday, Albertans for Ethical Drug Policy, a group of peers, professionals, advocates, and people who have lost loved ones to the overdose crisis, said in a joint statement that the UCP government is focusing on their “Alberta model” and closing down supervised consumption services (SCS) despite the fact they help save lives.

In Edmonton, the supervised consumption site at Boyle Street Community Services was closed down last fall, while the George Spady site’s hours were expanded to 24 hours. In 2020, North America’s busiest supervised consumption service in Lethbridge was closed while the province plans to shutter the Sheldon M. Chumir safe consumption site in Calgary.

“This government’s actions clearly reveal their indifference to the staggering death toll and toward people who use drugs — our neighbours, friends, family members, employees, colleagues and community members,” the group said in a statement Monday. “The deaths will continue to rise as a result.”

Between January and May of this year, 624 Albertans died from accidental drug poisoning, a 41 per cent increase compared to the same time frame last year.

In 2020, a total of 1,328 Albertans died of drug poisoning, a 155 per cent increase from 521 in 2019. There has never been an overdose fatality at a safe consumption site.

Kym Porter, advocacy leader with Moms Stop the Harm (MSTH) and part of the coalition, said in the release MSTH supports a spectrum of harm reduction, from saving lives within an SCS to helping a person live a meaningful life.

“Removing any support within that spectrum equals death,” she said.

Albertans for Ethical Drug Policy is demanding the province take a number of actions to address the drug poisoning crisis.

The demands include retracting the safe consumption site report and reopening closed sites, as well as opening injectable opioid agonist treatment (iOAT) programs to new patients. The coalition says additional supervised consumption sites should be opened in Calgary, Edmonton, Grande Prairie, Lethbridge, Medicine Hat and Red Deer, while low-barrier, community accessible drug checking services should be made available.

The group is also calling for funding for harm reduction programs to be reinstated to 2019 levels and iOAT programs expanded, including in correctional facilities.

The coalition is also asking for low barrier access to safe pharmaceutical alternatives to toxic street drugs to be provided and the new regulations to supervised consumption sites should be cancelled.

“The loss of supervised consumption services at this time, when deaths continue to mount, will directly translate to increased drug poisoning morbidity and mortality in Alberta,” said Dr. Bonnie Larson, a professor at the University of Calgary, in the release.

“Excellent scientific evidence supports the efficacy, safety, and cost-effectiveness of supervised consumption. Closing these services represents a violation of my patients’ rights to essential, life-saving care.”

In a statement, Eric Engler, press secretary for mental health and addictions associate minister Mike Ellis, said the province is ensuring 4,000 Albertans can access treatment and recovery services annually and free of charge.

“We are increasing access to evidence based-medications for opioid addiction, and we are improving the quality of services that reduce harm before someone enters recovery,” Engler said.

“Alberta’s government is spending more in 2021/22 on services that reduce harm than at any time in Alberta’s history. The idea that we are engaged in an ‘unjust assault’ on services that reduce harm is outrageous and categorically false.”

Albertans for Ethical Drug Policy is hosting a march and rally for International Overdose Awareness Day. At noon on Tuesday, the march will gather at 103A Avenue and 100 Street, behind city hall, and at 1:30 p.m. the rally will take place at the Alberta legislature.

ajunker@postmedia.com

twitter.com/JunkerAnna

HOORAY ANOTHER SPLIT ON THE RIGHT

'We can learn from Quebec': Alberta separatists look to the Bloc as Conservative support wanes

Jesse Snyder

© Provided by National Post Western alienation is about as old as the province of Alberta itself.

CAYLEY, ALTA. — Western separatists, dismayed by the current direction of Erin O’Toole’s Conservative Party this election, are drawing inspiration from an unlikely source: the Bloc Québécois.

“We can learn from Quebec,” said Jay Hill, interim leader of the Maverick Party, formerly known as Wexit Canada.

Resentments among some in the West toward Ottawa continue to run high in Western provinces, particularly in Alberta and Saskatchewan, where frustrations are mounting over a perceived lack of appreciation for its oil and gas industry and a federal transfer system that has starved the West of much-needed revenues.

In response, prairie separatists are seeking to establish a party that, similar to the Bloc, would act exclusively in the interests of the West as a way to elevate its profile within the federation and push for policies more supportive of a fossil fuel-based economy. Their bid comes as Liberal leader Justin Trudeau seeks to re-establish a majority government on election day Sept. 20, and as support among right-leaning voters for the Conservative Party of Canada has waned.

To ensure a purely Western orientation, the Maverick Party’s 27 candidates are running solely in prairie provinces and northern territories. Their pitch is simple: for decades, voters in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and mainland B.C. have almost uniformly supported a common vision, only to stand by as Ottawa crafts policies that appease the desires of Quebec and Ontario. The only antidote, they say, is true regional representation.

“Wrapping ourselves in the Maple Leaf Flag only ensures, as patriots, that we will continue to be abused by central and eastern Canada,” said Hill, a former member of Parliament for the Conservatives for 17 years.

Hill, a self-proclaimed “slow learner,” said he has since changed his tune on Canada’s parliamentary system, and is now seeking to consolidate a disgruntled Western voter base that has come to question its place in confederation. That involves proposing a softer version of separation, something like “separation-lite” that favours gradually shaving down Ottawa’s centralized power base and establishing a more distinct Western region.

It could prove a steep climb. Even in Alberta, where separatist sentiment is most prominent, alternative candidates are polling well below mainstream parties. Even so, their numbers are already high enough to influence races at the riding level.

In a recent Leger poll, a measly nine per cent of Alberta respondents said they intended to vote for alternative parties, roughly split between the separatist Maverick Party and Maxime Bernier’s People’s Party of Canada (PPC), which offers a more bare-knuckled populism than strict Western-first policy. Conservative support in the province, meanwhile, sits at 47 per cent, followed by the Liberals (24 per cent) and NDP (17 per cent).

© Al Charest/Postmedia/File Maverick Party interim leader Jay Hill: “Wrapping ourselves in the Maple Leaf Flag only ensures, as patriots, that we will continue to be abused by central and eastern Canada.”

Still, Western-oriented parties see opportunities to make major gains this election, as conservative voters’ grudging support for O’Toole remains low. According to the same Leger poll, just 24 per cent of Albertans thought O’Toole would make the best prime minister of all leaders, compared with 16 per cent for Justin Trudeau. That actually marked a substantial improvement from a separate Leger poll two weeks earlier, where just 15 per cent of voters chose O’Toole as best potential prime minister, several points behind both Jagmeet Singh and Trudeau.

“Even though a lot of people are voting for Mr. O’Toole, there’s not necessarily a bunch of enthusiasm for him,” said Andrew Enns, executive vice-president at Leger.

Western separatists, for their part, say O’Toole in particular has gone too far to appeal to the East, causing the Conservatives to adopt policies that they view as directly opposed to their interests or at best represent a watered-down conservatism that is hard to distinguish from the Liberals.

“That’s the difference between the Maverick Party and the Conservative Party of Canada: we have one stakeholder, and that’s Western Canada,” Josh Wylie, the Maverick Party’s candidate in the Foothills riding of southern Alberta, said during a recent rally in Cayley, Alta. “There is no conflict, there is no confusion. We can be very clear about who we represent and how we represent them.”

Around 60 attendees are packed into the small community hall in Cayley, a hamlet south of Calgary situated in the middle of a sea of canola and barley.

The event, which perplexingly begins with the singing of Canada’s national anthem, exhibits a deep distaste for Ottawa’s treatment of other provinces, most notably Quebec. A mix of ranchers, farmers, and other blue-collar workers in attendance audibly groan as the Maverick candidate references Trudeau’s recent decision to transfer $6 billion to Quebec without conditions, ostensibly to cover childcare costs.
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Wylie, a square-jawed oilpatch consultant and former Conservative voter, tells his supporters that these sorts of policies have continued even after nearly every seat in Alberta and Saskatchewan went in support of Andrew Scheer following the 2019 election.

“We swept Alberta and Saskatchewan, we did what we were supposed to do at the time,” he says. “And in return for that loyalty that we showed to that party, we got Erin O’Toole and a carbon tax in their policy platform.”

Their frustrations extend beyond the energy sector. One cattle farmer in attendance says severe drought this season has obliterated his hay harvest, reducing his total output from 1,208 bales last year to just 67. While Western farmers in Canada have not been able to access government supports to make up the losses, he says, U.S. officials have offered payouts to farmers in Montana and elsewhere, who have in turn bought up the already-dwindling hay supplies in Canada and in turn caused a further spike in prices.

Among those in attendance, there is a common and repeated sense that a similar neglect would not take place under a more Western-oriented government.

At the root of their broader distaste around how wealth is distributed within the Canadian federation — most notably through transfer programs like equalization — that have remained unchanged even in times of Conservative rule.

“It didn’t really matter who we voted in for the [Conservative] party, it just seemed like they got mixed up with Eastern elites,” said Murray Williamson, an 83-year-old real estate agent selling farm land in the region. “The biggest thing right now is equalization.”

Angered voters often take particular umbrage with the federal equalization program, established after the Second World War as a way to ensure a more equitable fiscal balance among provinces. The Fiscal Stabilization Program, a much smaller transfer program designed to counteract provincial revenue losses, has also become a target of Western leaders, most notably Alberta Premier Jason Kenney, who has made the issue a central piece of his appeal to voters.

Alberta pays an average of about $20 billion into equalization each year, a number regularly cited by frustrated Western voters. According to Fairness Alberta, an activist group, the province has contributed $324 billion more to Ottawa than it received in return during the two decades between 2000 and 2020.

Kenney commissioned a “Fair Deal Panel” that, in its final report last July, recommended Alberta “press strenuously” to reverse recent changes to fiscal stabilization, and push ahead with a referendum on equalization.

Many observers have said the referendum amounts to nothing more than political theatre, while economists, for their part, largely argue that frustrations over equalization are misplaced.

Alberta has a higher proportion of wealthy people than other provinces, so it contributes more under the program’s per-capita formula. Its relative young population also means that it receives a smaller chunk of major transfers like elderly benefits.

Despite all the angst over equalization and carbon taxes, separatist feelings in the West are lower today than they were following the 2019 election, according to Duane Bratt, professor at Mount Royal University.

Western resentments were running high when First Nations groups blockaded a number of major railway crossings in early 2020 in protest of the building of the Coastal GasLink Pipeline through traditional Wet’suwet’en lands. At the same time, Vancouver-based mining giant Teck Resources had shelved its $20-billion Frontier oilsands mine, raising fresh doubts over the Liberals’ updated regulatory regime for oil and gas projects.

But the COVID-19 pandemic, Bratt said, put a damper on those resentments and rearranged voter priorities.

“It’s not as powerful a force as it was then, and it sure hasn’t gained momentum,” he said.

Still, Western alienation is about as old as the province of Alberta itself, and is not about to disappear.

Soon after joining the Canadian federation, Alberta and Saskatchewan were protesting Ottawa’s threats to remove freight subsidies on the Canadian Pacific Railway that would have hiked prices for farmers transporting their crops. British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba all fought for years for control over their natural resources, which was eventually granted through a series of legislative changes in 1930.

Today, similar sentiments are manifested in an exasperation over Alberta’s battered oil industry. That is often reflected in its inability over the last 20 years to build major export pipelines, which have depressed prices for Canadian crude and sapped the province of tens of billions in foregone revenue. New federal environmental policies only layer on new restrictions, according to some.

The Maverick Party and People’s Party of Canada have been railing against Ottawa’s carbon tax, now set to rise to $170 per tonne by 2030, saying it raises household costs in Canada while failing to curb pollution from some of the world’s largest emitters, like China. Supporters of the tax, meanwhile, say it’s the most efficient way to lower emissions in a world where sea levels are rapidly rising and atmospheric temperatures are gradually ticking upward

.

© Supplied Maverick Party’s candidate Josh Wylie: “That’s the difference between the Maverick Party and the Conservative Party of Canada: we have one stakeholder, and that’s Western Canada. There is no conflict.”

The Liberal government’s Bill C-69, which updated the regulatory review process for major projects, and C-48, which banned oil tankers from docking at ports along the northern half of the B.C. coast, are also viewed as explicit attacks on the West.

O’Toole has also promised to repeal both bills and has voiced support for Canada’s oil and gas industry. He has been decidedly more cautious about his position toward the separatist elements of the Conservative’s Western base.

Just one day after the Maverick Party’s rally in Cayley, O’Toole was in Quebec City presenting voters with a 10-point promise to Quebec nationals, who he said would be fully supported within a Conservative government.

“All Quebec nationalists are welcome in the Conservative party,” he said . “It is your home.”

His promises largely mirrored some of the requests that have been tabled in the west, including a pledge to give Quebec more control over immigration, a single tax return, and a commitment to stay out of provincial policies like its secularism bill, which outlaws government workers from wearing religious symbols.

Western separatists, if given the chance, say they would potentially create a Western-specific police force, similar to the Sûreté du Québec, or push for looser gun restrictions through a provincial Chief Firearms Officer.

It remains unclear whether Albertans, angry as they may be, will be wiling to support a pair of parties currently polling at around five per cent, and who held no seats in the House of Commons during the last Parliamentary session.

Others say they fear vote-splitting — a worry that the Maverick Party has sought to address directly by running candidates only in ridings where the Tories are dominant. In the Foothills riding, for example, Conservative John Barlow won 82 per cent of the vote, while the second-place Liberal candidate won just 5.8 per cent. The People’s Party of Canada, meanwhile, is currently running 249 candidates across the country.

The Mavericks have also sought to distinguish themselves from the PPC by steering away from more sensitive social issues like immigration and abortion, and have proposed a softer approach to separatism than its most hardcore supporters might desire.

All 27 Maverick candidates have signed agreements stating that they would not table private member’s bills on the topic of abortion. They would be free to vote as they like if such a bill was presented by another party.

“We want to be as inclusive as possible,” Hill said.

Rather than outright separation, the party proposes a so-called “two track” system, under which it would first put forward a series of smaller policy positions that would weaken Ottawa’s influence over the region and, according to the party, allow more autonomy for the West.

“Of course, there’s no procedure or mechanism to allow us to leave right now even if the majority supported that. So, somehow we have to bring along the majority of Westerners to the idea that we’ve tried everything possible to convince the rest of Canada to change.”

The Mavericks and PPC could be viewed as two factions of the now-defunct Reform Party, which was folded into the “big umbrella” Conservative Party in 2000. The PPC is more focused on fiscal restraint and social conservatism while the Mavericks are more strictly interested in constitutional issues and equalization.

Together they represent a conservative movement that has thus far struggled to establish itself in Canada’s parliamentary system. And seeing its own shortcomings, Hill said, they are now trying to model themselves after their sworn enemy: the Bloc Québécois and the province of Quebec.

“Who can realistically argue that the Bloc hasn’t been successful for the last 30 years?”

• Email: jsnyder@postmedia.com | Twitter: jesse_snyder

From now until the bitter end of Election 44, the National Post is publishing a special daily edition of First Reading, our politics newsletter, to keep you posted on the ins and outs (and way outs) of the campaign. All curated by the National Post’s own Tristin Hopper and published Monday to Friday at 6 p.m. and Sundays at 9 a.m. Sign up here.

CANADA

First Nations head back into consultations on new nuclear waste storage proposal on their territories

The Saugeen Ojibway Nation (SON) in Ontario is considering a proposal for a deep geological repository for nuclear waste storage after having said no to something similar last year.

In January 2020, SON members overwhelmingly voted down a deep geological repository (DGR) proposed by Ontario Power Generation (OPG) to store low- and intermediate-level waste on the Bruce Nuclear Generating Station site in Kincardine.

Now, however, SON is considering a proposal made by the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) to store high level nuclear waste in a DGR. A DGR is developed in a “suitable rock formation to safely contain and isolate used nuclear fuel,” according to the NWMO.

“We have to consult on every project so we can’t just say ‘because we already said no to (OPG), we can’t consult with you’ because that duty goes both ways,” said Brittany Jones, energy associate in SON’s environment office.

Chippewas of Saugeen First Nation and Chippewas of Nawash Unceded First Nation comprise SON.

While similarities do exist between the projects, including their location in Anishnaabekiing (SON’s territory), they are immensely different and one of those differences comes in consultation, which has been a “fairly large issue with our community,” said Jones.

The OPG proposal was defeated by 1,058 of 1,232 voting SON members. Then-Anishnabek Nation Grand Council Chief Glen Hare said it was “a wake-up call to consult with people.”

The OPG-owned Bruce power plant has been in Anishnaabekiing for more than 50 years. There was no input from SON when the plant was built. Engagement sessions with SON communities on OPG’s proposed DGR didn’t take place until 2019.

OPG honoured the commitment it made in 2013 not to proceed with the project without SON’s consent.

It’s been a different situation with NWMO, with the project to be located in South Bruce near the Teeswater River.

“The Nuclear Waste Management Organization believes that Indigenous people have a really integral and important role to play. These kinds of projects cannot proceed without having Indigenous support and we have a reconciliation policy at NWMO,” said Karine Glenn, strategic project director at NWMO.

“We’ve been in talks with NWMO quite a few years now. … A couple years ago we signed an actual agreement with them to begin the work. But we’ve known that the project was coming up for quite some time,” said Jones.

The NWMO began its site selection process for the storage of high-level nuclear waste with 22 sites. The selection has been narrowed down to two sites in Ontario, with the other being in Ignace.

“For those two sites, the principles on which the nuclear waste management is basing its whole project on is to sign a site with suitable geology and willing host community. The project will not proceed if communities in the area are not willing to host a project. We still haven't done a determination of willingness,” said Glenn.

Shutdowns caused by measures to control the coronavirus pandemic and “online burnout” has hampered community engagement, says Jones, even though the process officially began a couple years ago.

Jones says her role is not to tell the community how to vote, but to work in partnership with NWMO to present information to the community so members can make an informed decision. NWMO is present at community engagement sessions in order to answer the “high level technical questions.” Independent neutral experts also take part.

While the South Bruce municipality is also holding community engagement sessions, Jones says SON sees value in hosting its own sessions. She points out that SON did not approve the OPG project but South Bruce residents did.

“Indigenous people and the people from our communities, always our main concern’s the water and the land. Our people haven’t been swayed by money and things like that in the past,” she said.

“The communities are really digging down on the willingness side of things right now. Site selection isn't until late 2023 (so) there’s quite a bit of time yet for the communities to come to a decision,” said Jonathan Zettel, NWMO regional communications manager for southern Ontario.

Zettel is confident that at least one of the two sites will get full community support.

“But we still are early in the stage. Right now we're just hopeful that's going to be the case. Once we present the safety case, and just how safe the DGR—the solution for this waste— is, people will start to see that's an environmental plus. It’s something to actually get excited about,” he said.

Jones is hopeful all the information about the NWMO’s proposal can be provided to SON members within a year. No date has been set for a vote.

“What we’ve said to our communities and the conclusion we’ve come up to is, if you don’t want to support the DGR that’s fine, that’s our decision, but it’s not necessarily a yes or no answer. We need to find a solution for the waste. If this isn’t it, then what is it?” said Jones, who adds that high-level nuclear waste will continue to be created.

As for discussions held by chiefs’ organizations, both provincially and nationally, opposing small nuclear reactor development and the storage of nuclear waste underground, Jones says leadership is firm on how SON is proceeding.

“I know that there have been resolutions like that on the floor at (the Assembly of First Nations) meetings, at Chiefs of Ontario meetings, and we’ve let them know that this is our process and this is how we’re going to make the decision,” she said.

If the vote is unfavourable, Glenn says NWMO has committed to not go ahead with the project.

Economic benefits to the DGR have yet to be discussed, says Jones, and she doesn’t expect that to happen until after a “yes” vote.

However, figures offered by NWMO include $21 billion in infrastructure costs over a 150-year timeframe. During the construction phase 1,100 jobs are expected to be created. During the operations phase, that number is expected to jump to 1,300 jobs.

“I do believe that (NWMO) will have to hold a certain percentage of positions for SON members or Indigenous people,” said Jones.

She also points out that the protocol agreement with NWMO had “funds attached for certain positions” that have already been created within the environment office. If the proposal is approved, she expects even more jobs to be created in her office.

Windspeaker.com

By Shari Narine, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Windspeaker.com, Windspeaker.com

Texas utility settles over sky-high energy bills from freeze

AUSTIN, Texas — The electric utility Griddy Energy has reached a settlement with Texas officials over crushing electric bills its customers received after the deadly February winter storm and cold wave, the Texas Attorney General’s Office announced Monday.

Griddy Energy sold power to consumers at wholesale prices plus a $9.99 monthly fee. Its rates skyrocketed during the February freeze when the state grid operators raised wholesale prices to $9,000 per megawatt-hour.

The state sued Griddy after customers received bills totaling thousands of dollars. Griddy filed for bankruptcy and confirmed a liquidation plan that waives claims against customers for charges incurred from Feb. 15 through Feb. 19, while the $9,000 per megawatt-hour price for wholesale power was in effect. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said his office then entered negotiations toward a settlement.

“I am pleased with the result of those negotiations, and I will continue to fight to protect the livelihoods of all who live in this great state," Paxton said in a statement.

Wholesale electric power prices are market-driven and vary from moment to moment — lower when demand is lower at night and during predawn hours, weekends and temperate weather; higher during the daylight hours of weekdays and during weather with temperature extremes. On Monday, when temperatures ranged from the 70s to the 90s, prices ranged from about $28 per megawatt-hour at 4 a.m. to $78 per megawatt-hour and rising as of 3 p.m.

Texas was hit with historic snowfall and single-digit temperatures in an icy blast that cut across the Deep South for days starting Feb. 14. At least 210 people died in the freeze, mostly from hypothermia after their electric service failed and they lost their heating.

Prices began to spike as the Arctic storm approached Texas, and many power generators shut down for various reasons — wind turbines froze, and frozen natural gas wellheads prevented some gas-fired power plants from receiving fuel.

Griddy warned customers that they would face price increases and told them to attempt to switch to another provider, but some who didn’t were hit with bills in the thousands of dollars.

Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, blamed the power failures on the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which manages the grid entrusted with providing electricity to the bulk of the state. ERCOT's chief executive was fired and the three members of the Public Utility Commission that oversees the council resigned.

The governor appointed new PUC members, a new ERCOT CEO was appointed, and the Legislature passed measures intended to strengthen electric service reliability, leading Abbott to declare the grid's shortcomings fixed. However, ERCOT appealed twice during the spring for electricity users to conserve the power they use, prompting Abbott to demand aggressive action by the PUC toward ERCOT.,

Terry Wallace, The Associated Press

Failed nuclear contractor signs $21M deal, working with feds

COLUMBIA, S.C. — The chief contractor at a failed multibillion-dollar project to build two nuclear reactors in South Carolina has agreed to pay more than $20 million as part of a cooperation agreement with federal authorities probing the fiasco.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Under an agreement announced Monday by Acting U.S. Attorney Rhett DeHart, Westinghouse Electric Co. will contribute $5 million to a program intended to assist low-income ratepayers affected by the project’s failure. Another payment of $16.25 million will be due before July 1, 2022.

The company will also be required to cooperate with federal investigators still probing the company's role in the 2017 debacle, which cost ratepayers and investors billions and left nearly 6,000 people jobless.

Westinghouse was the lead contractor on the construction of two new reactors at the V.C. Summer Nuclear Station in Jenkinsville, about 30 miles (48 kilometers) north of Columbia. South Carolina Electric & Gas Co. parent company SCANA Corp. and state-owned utility company Santee Cooper spent nearly $10 billion on the project before halting construction in 2017 following Westinghouse’s bankruptcy.

The collapse of the V.C. Summer project spawned multiple lawsuits, some by ratepayers who said company executives knew the project was doomed and misled consumers and regulators as they petitioned for a series of rate hikes. Three top-level executives have already pleaded guilty in the multi-year federal fraud investigation. A fourth has been charged and is expected in federal court Tuesday.

It may take 'a few weeks or months' to reach an agreement on Iran nuclear deal, says IIF

Earlier this year, a federal judge signed off on a plan to disperse $192 million among former SCANA shareholders, a settlement that attorneys for the investors said was the largest securities class action recovery obtained in South Carolina when a judge approved it last year.

On Monday, DeHart said Westinghouse has given federal investigators more than three million pages of documents, data and correspondences and made employee witnesses available for interviews. Through its former parent company Toshiba, Westinghouse has also made more than $2 billion in settlement payments related to the project.

Since the failure, Westinghouse has removed, reassigned or retrained its senior management, elected a new board and implemented new financial controls, according to DeHart.

“Our office continues to seek justice for the victims of the V.C. Summer Project failure,” DeHart said in a news release. “Westinghouse’s cooperation is vital to our ongoing efforts to hold accountable the individuals most responsible for this debacle.”

___

Meg Kinnard can be reached at http://twitter.com/MegKinnardAP.

Meg Kinnard, The Associated Press

The wealthy - not the Fed - are to blame for low interest rates and rising inequality, study says
bwinck@businessinsider.com (Ben Winck)

© REUTERS/Carlo Allegri Trader Peter Tuchman smiles as he works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange after the market opening in New York, December 23, 2013.

 REUTERS/Carlo Allegri

It's inequality that s lower, not the other way around, NBER researchers said Friday.

Wealthy Americans' ballooning savings over the last two decades fueled interest rates' decline, they find.

Lower rates lift asset values and help the rich get richer, an expert says. Or in other words, "inequality begets inequality!"

Rock-bottom interest rates. They make it cheaper to borrow, less lucrative to save, and are meant to boost economic activity.

The Federal Reserve's benchmark interest rate has become its go-to tool for turning the dial up or down on spending as necessary. But the rate has been on a decades-long decline and currently sits near zero as the US emerges from recession. That long slide to record lows risks new headaches for the economy.

The problem, as Insider has previously reported, is that low interest rates not only support the economy, they help the wealthy enjoy significant appreciation of their investments. As the Fed padded against the pandemic's fallout, the country's top earners padded their wallets.

The Fed has taken flak for the trend, with economists warning that near-zero rates worsen inequality. But what if that narrative is wrong, and the wealthy are behind rates' steady decline instead of the Fed?

The conventional argument should be flipped on its head, according to a study published Friday by the National Bureau for Economic Research. Wealthy Americans' booming income powered the decades-long decline in interest rates, economists Atif Mian, Ludwig Straub, and Amir Sufi wrote. That downtrend then lifted stocks and most recently powered the market's rebound from 2020 lows.

"It is a vicious cycle, and we are stuck in it," Mian wrote in a Tuesday tweet. In other words, it may not be the Fed's fault, which means it will be much harder to solve.

Read more: Everything you need to know about the Fed, America's central bank, which probably helped you buy a house last year

The rich get richer because the rich save the most. The Fed can only watch.

The team of researchers focused on the natural rate of interest, or r* (r-star), which is meant to foster ideal hiring conditions while also keeping price growth under control.

The novel aspect of the research is the argument that this natural rate has steadily declined for nearly five decades due to ballooning savings piles around the world - after all, to keep massive savings from overstimulating the economy, the Fed had to keep rates at extraordinary lows.

That places the Fed in a precarious spot. Lifting interest rates to counter the decline would likely drag the economy into a recession by discouraging borrowing. But keeping rates at such low levels leaves the central bank with limited ability to further stimulate the economy in times of crisis.

That decline in r* worsened inequality by lifting stocks and other assets, but the wealth gap likely powered the downtrend in the first place, the researchers found. To start, rich Americans have counted for an increasingly large share of total earnings. The top 10% of earners took home roughly 45% of all US income by 2020, up from just 30% in the 1970s, according to the study.

The leap in earnings translated into larger cash piles. Roughly 40% of all private savings were held by the country's top earners in 2019, up from 30% in 1995. That equates to trillions of dollars in cash.

The savings glut that's dragging the natural rate lower, then, is largely held by the rich. And the rich have benefited from this situation they created.

"Since it is the very rich who own most of the assets, a fall in interest rates makes them richer," Mian said. "Inequality begets inequality!"

To be sure, it's unclear just how much the savings glut is powering the natural rate's decline. The downtrend isn't exclusive to the US, signaling factors other than income inequality are dragging on the rate.

The researchers only noted that data supports income inequality being "an important factor" in the decline, not the sole driver. They also somewhat hinged the hypothesis on forecasts, saying its "relative strength ... is perhaps best measured by looking into the future."

Regardless, the researchers' study underscores just how difficult reversing inequality can be, and how ingrained the wealth gap has become in the modern American economy.

Few US workers aware of COVID sick leave protections

Peer-Reviewed Publication

CORNELL UNIVERSITY

Even with federal provisions aimed at protecting workers, instances of sick people being unable to take time off tripled during the pandemic and fewer than half of workers were aware that emergency COVID-19 sick leave was available, new Cornell research has found. 

In the study, “Awareness and Use of (Emergency) Sick Leave: US Employees’ Unaddressed Sick Leave Needs in a Global Pandemic,” which published in July in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers found that part-time and foreign-born workers were most at risk of being unaware of the available paid leave. 

“When the government does not ensure that people have access to paid sick leave, people go to work sick,” said Nicolas Ziebarth, associate professor in the Cornell Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy and co-author of the study. 

“And when you have a virus going on – it could be the flu or coronavirus, it doesn’t really matter – then the sick people at work infect coworkers who go on to infect other people,” Ziebarth said. “If they send a kid sick to school, because they can’t afford to stay home with them, the sick kid infects other kids who likely infect their families. The point is that you have more virus infections in the population, which is bad for population health.” 

Ziebarth is also the associate director of the Cornell Institute for Healthy Futures. 

In March 2020, the United States, one of the only developed nations without universal paid sick leave, implemented the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA) providing federally funded emergency paid sick leave due to COVID-19. 

Analyzing the data from a nationally representative Cornell National Social Survey conducted between October and December 2020, Ziebarth and colleagues found that around 8 million U.S. employees utilized FFCRA sick leave in the first six to eight months of the policy’s implementation. 

The study found that awareness of the FFCRA provision was particularly low among service and hospitality workers – some of the very people who made up the essential workforce that carried the nation through the worst of the surges and subsequent shutdowns. 

Women were at a 69% higher risk of unmet sick leave needs, which, Ziebarth said, suggests that universal paid leave can improve gender equity. 

“One reason the unmet needs for women is so much higher is that they are overrepresented in the hospitality and service industries,” he said. “Another is that women tend to have a higher burden of work. They are still more likely to be the primary caregiver for children and have to balance paid work, chores, and childcare.” 

In a previous study, Ziebarth found the FFCRA policy prevented 15,000 new infections a day in March and April 2020. The policy, which was set to expire in March 2021, was extended through the end of September. 

###

Co-authors include Emily Jelliffe ’21, Paul Pangburn, M.H.A. ’21, and Stefan Pichler, research fellow at ETH Zurich. The study was funded by the Cornell Center for the Study of Inequality and the Center for Equitable Growth. 

---

JOURNAL

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

WAGE THEFT

USPS has shorted some workers’ pay for years, CPI finds

Nancy Campos’ back ached as she loaded more than 100 Amazon packages onto her truck. The 59-year-old grandmother, a mail carrier for the U.S. Postal Service, had worked 13 days in a row without a lunch break, and now she was delivering on the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday to keep up with a never-ending flow of boxes.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

At the end of her shift that January day, Campos filled out her time sheet. Then she took a picture of it — for proof.

“I knew what was going to happen,” said Campos, who delivers mail in Midland, Texas, “because it happens every pay period.”

Two weeks later, when she checked her paystub in the payroll system, she said she was missing six hours of overtime pay. That added up to about $201 in lost wages — a week’s worth of groceries.

Postal workers across the country share her frustration.

___

This story was provided to The Associated Press by The Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit news organization based in Washington, D.C.

___

The Postal Service regularly cheats mail carriers out of their pay, according to a Center for Public Integrity investigation. Managers at hundreds of post offices around the country have illegally underpaid hourly workers for years, arbitrators and federal investigators have found.

Private arbitration records tell part of the story. From 2010 to 2019, at least 250 managers in 60 post offices were caught changing mail carriers’ time cards to show them working fewer hours, resulting in unpaid wages, according to a batch of arbitration award summaries obtained by Public Integrity for cases filed by one of the three major postal unions.

Supervisors found to be cheating were rarely disciplined — often receiving only a warning or more training. In four cities, arbitration documents show, post office managers continued to alter time cards after promising union leaders they would stop.

Since 2005, meanwhile, the Postal Service has been cited by the federal government 1,150 times for underpaying letter carriers and other employees, including one case that involved 164 violations, according to Labor Department data obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. The agency determined that those workers lost about $659,000 in pay. But it allowed the Postal Service to pay back less than half after negotiations with the agency — a common practice at the Labor Department. About 19% of the cases did not indicate whether the Postal Service paid back employees.

These findings point to widespread wage theft at the iconic quasi-governmental institution. Yet they offer only a partial view of the problem. Not captured are any arbitration cases filed by other postal unions or wage theft grievances settled before reaching arbitration.

Cases keep cropping up as the Postal Service struggles to pay off $188 billion in debt and unfunded liabilities, accrued largely because federal law requires it to prepay retiree healthcare and pension benefits. The agency has cut nearly 142,000 jobs since 2007, and in March 2020, it needed a $10 billion emergency loan from Congress to help pay its bills.

Mail carriers say their supervisors face intense pressure to keep overtime costs down. At the same time, pandemic-fueled spikes in online ordering are overwhelming mail carriers with packages. And they can’t count on getting paid for all their work.

A spokesperson for the Postal Service, David Partenheimer, said the agency does not condone supervisors making unsupported timecard adjustments and takes such allegations seriously.

“This position is messaged to the postal workforce directly from postal leaders, including the Vice President, Delivery Operations, who periodically reissues policies regarding appropriate timecard administration for supervisors,” Partenheimer wrote in an email to Public Integrity. He declined to comment on specific cases.

Campos said the agency still owes her thousands of dollars for two other wage theft grievances they settled before she discovered the missing overtime pay in January. She said her boss promised to pay her back for working the holiday but never did.

“I just had it. Enough is enough,” said Campos, who shared copies of her timesheets and pay stubs with Public Integrity. “We are depending on that money. When you get shorted, it’s the most horrible feeling.”

A systemic problem

Every morning, Campos and thousands of other mail carriers across the United States swipe their badges at a local post office to clock in for work. They sort mail for their routes, check undelivered items and load up their trucks. They swipe their badge a few more times when they begin and end their delivery route and other tasks, and once again when they’re done for the day.

All of this is supposed to happen within an eight-hour shift for most carriers. That’s because the Postal Service doesn’t want to pay overtime, which is 50% extra per hour under federal law. The inspector general has repeatedly admonished the post office for spending billions of dollars in overtime each year and has urged managers to cut back.

But mail carriers say it’s impossible to get back in time. After all, the Postal Service is notoriously short-staffed at a time when carriers are delivering a record number of packages. In 2019 alone, they delivered 1.5 billion items for Amazon — nearly a third of the online retailer’s packages.

That means carriers log a lot of extra hours. And it’s not uncommon for managers to go into the system and delete some of them. Sometimes their changes show carriers ending their shifts earlier or taking an unpaid lunch break, according to Public Integrity’s review of private arbitration decisions maintained by the National Association of Letter Carriers, a labor union with nearly 290,000 members — about 45% of the agency’s total workforce.

In most of these cases, managers did not submit the required paperwork to explain the changes or notify the affected employee. Other times, supervisors just told carriers to clock out after eight hours and keep working without pay.

That happened regularly to Maverick Tran and some of his colleagues in San Jose, California, according to a 2019 decision by an independent arbitrator.

Tran told the arbitrator — who acts like a judge in this type of legal dispute — that two supervisors often told him to manually clock out at 6 p.m. if he was running late while delivering the mail.

“I still haven’t unloaded my truck or empty out anything, but I would be off the clock,” he said during a closed-door hearing at the main San Jose post office.

A co-worker said managers would regularly clock him out themselves before he returned to the station. Another carrier said they instructed him to punch out before the end of his shift to avoid “unauthorized overtime.”

One of those co-workers, Rafael Zambrano-Lay, said he was so scared about returning to his post office past 6 p.m. that he would skip meals, forego rest breaks and run while carrying mail to customers’ homes.

Zambrano-Lay did not respond to a request for comment and Tran declined to discuss the case.

Their union representative told the arbitrator that nearly every supervisor in San Jose’s 12 post offices had improperly manipulated employee hours each week for at least three years. In an eight-month period in 2017, the union found that these unauthorized changes shorted mail carriers out of 77 regular hours and 1,864 overtime hours, collectively costing them anywhere from $52,000 to $90,000 in lost wages.

In the arbitration hearing, a Postal Service representative did not explain why managers changed carriers’ time cards. He said the behavior was not widespread.

Nancy Hutt, the arbitrator, disagreed. After reviewing time cards for 240 mail carriers in San Jose, Hutt said she grew alarmed. The data “reflects a widespread practice by management of willfully and repetitively deleting and altering time records of Letter Carriers,” she wrote in her decision.

Other arbitrators expressed similar shock when reviewing such allegations.

“Heinous,” an arbitrator in Nashville, Tennessee, wrote in 2018 when presented with evidence that a manager deleted carriers’ work hours. “It’s an act, in my view, on the same level as theft.”

In Boston, arbitrator Katherine Morgan called the pattern of wage theft “systemic” and “egregious.” In a 2019 decision, she described the time card changes as serious federal offenses “which cannot be treated lightly, and which could lead to fines and even imprisonment.”

In all, arbitrators found that postal managers in at least nine states illegally altered mail carriers’ time cards in recent years, cheating more than 900 mail carriers out of pay. They ordered the Postal Service to stop falsifying time cards and pay back employees they cheated.

“It’s hard to believe,” said Jennifer Williams, a former mail carrier in the Atlanta area. “This is a government job. Nobody should go to work and wonder if they’re going to get paid.”

Williams, 36, said co-workers warned her to keep track of her hours when she was hired as a mail carrier in February 2020. She said she didn’t get her first paycheck and had to file a grievance with the union to get paid. When her second paycheck arrived, Williams said, she was missing five hours of overtime. Another supervisor told Williams that her boss had deleted the hours, according to a lawsuit she filed against the Postal Service in federal court.

When she brought up the missing overtime to her boss on the phone, she said her boss berated her. A few days later, Williams said the mail truck she was driving broke down and she was fired for not finishing her route. She sued in September 2020, claiming she was illegally fired for complaining about wage theft.

“I was really upset because I was depending on working at the post office to keep myself afloat,” said Williams, who said she had to take a low-paid job at a filter factory after she was fired.

Partenheimer, the Postal Service spokesperson, declined to comment on the lawsuit. But in court records, lawyers for the agency denied that a supervisor deleted Williams’ overtime hours or that she was fired for complaining about missing pay. Both parties settled the case in June, with the Postal Service agreeing to pay Williams $2,356 in damages and $3,143 in attorney’s fees.

Williams said she misses working for the post office. She once viewed the agency the same way thousands of other Black Americans have before her: as a stable job with good benefits and decent pay.

The Postal Service has long been one of the largest employers of African Americans in the United States. During the civil rights era, it was a place where Black workers could advance their careers without as many barriers as the private sector, said Frederick Gooding, an African American studies professor at Texas Christian University.

“The (Postal Service) was in many ways a beacon of hope and opportunity,” said Gooding, author of the book “American Dream Deferred: Black Federal Workers in Washington, D.C., 1941-1981.”

To this day, Black workers are overrepresented in the Postal Service. Though 12% of the overall U.S. workforce, they make up 19% of the agency’s mail carriers, 38% of its clerks and 31% of its mail handlers. Asians also represent a larger-than-average share of the postal workforce.

Wage theft within the agency might disproportionately harm these workers, but that’s unclear. Arbitration documents and Labor Department records don’t track each employee’s race or ethnicity. Yet the repeated paycheck theft tests the notion that the Postal Service is a desirable place to work.

“I would never have expected this from the post office,” said Campos, the Texas mail carrier. “This used to be an honorable job.”

Campos, who has worked as a carrier for three years, says she filed three grievances against her supervisors for unpaid work. They have since settled the complaints, she said, and management agreed to pay her a yet-to-be determined amount, including the extra hours she worked when delivering an “overburdened route” — a long one that regularly takes more time to finish than it’s supposed to.

Several of her co-workers are also waiting to be paid for similar reasons, she said, but she suspects that no one will be punished for ripping them off.

The arbitrator in the San Jose case told the Postal Service to pay employees what they’re owed. Tran, Zambrano-Lay and other carriers sued the agency in federal court a few months later. They want cash damages in addition to back pay. As of February, the Postal Service had paid back employees in that case a total of $570,000, attorneys for both sides reported to the court.

Accountability is rare

About two dozen employees gathered for a tense meeting at a San Antonio post office in February 2019. The station manager, Ruben Vela, was agitated. He told them that union outsiders were arriving to cause trouble.

When union steward Steven Ramirez showed up, Vela got in his face and berated him in front of everyone at the meeting, a witness said.

Ramirez had discovered that Vela and at least one other supervisor regularly deleted 25 employees’ work hours over a period of two years, according to an arbitration decision from later that year. In some cases, the arbitrator found, the other supervisor forged an employee’s initials approving the changes.

Employees who were at the 2019 meeting later said that Vela described the time card changes as a “simple mistake.”

Public Integrity was unable to reach Vela for comment.

Kirk Fraser, one of the mail carriers at the meeting, said he was devastated, according to the arbitration document. He called the practice an “immoral and egregious” breach of trust.

“Clearly, falsifying dozens of (USPS) forms does not equate to a simple mistake, but rather something that was done deliberately,” he told the arbitrator, according to the decision. He and some of his co-workers said they didn’t understand why Vela wasn’t fired.

Instead, the Postal Service said in arbitration that Vela was temporarily restricted from accessing the time card system until he could retake training on the proper way to handle time card changes. The agency told the arbitrator that they had paid back the employees.

Union representatives Richard Gould and Adam Reyna were incensed with the light rebuke. They asked the arbitrator to order the Postal Service to ban Vela from supervising letter carriers.

“This kind of thievery would have resulted in the immediate removal if perpetrated by a letter carrier, but inexplicably the Postal Service appears to have taken the position that (its) supervisors should be somehow held to a lower standard than the craft employees they manage,” the union representatives stated.

The Postal Service representative argued that any further punishment would impact the supervisor’s career and rob him of “due process.” The arbitrator decided not to mandate harsher discipline, agreeing with that argument.

A similar scene has played out in several closed-door hearings across the country. The Postal Service will acknowledge the unlawful time card changes and agree to pay back workers. A union advocate then asks an arbitrator to sanction the supervisors involved. The arbitrators say they can’t under the contract, ordering supervisors to take training instead.

That doesn’t always make a difference. A union representative begged an arbitrator in Chicago to take action after supervisors were found deleting employee work hours at all 11 offices in the city. Internal mediators had already ordered those supervisors to stop multiple times, but they wouldn’t.

“Cease and desist orders have not been effective in convincing Chicago Management to enforce the prohibition against stealing time,” the union advocate argued, according to the December 2020 decision. The arbitrator said she didn’t have the authority to mandate monetary penalties, and instead required post office leaders to meet with supervisors and tell them to stop. She also told the Postal Service to let the union do periodic time card reviews.

Fredric Rolando, president of the National Association of Letter Carriers, declined to comment on individual cases and said the union addresses time card fraud through the grievance-arbitration system and in the courts.

“Meanwhile, we are constantly monitoring these situations to make sure USPS complies with arbitration decisions and grievance settlements,” he said in a statement to Public Integrity.

In a September 2019 newsletter, Rolando lamented that one of the biggest problems facing the Postal Service is “a toxic workplace culture that tolerates abuse and wage/time theft.”

One rural mail carrier in North Carolina compared the Postal Service to a “bank robber.”

“It just seems like the post office is above the law,” said the employee, who asked that he not be identified out of fear of retaliation from his supervisors. “They pretty much do anything they want.”

The Postal Service knows it has a problem

Postal Service leaders are well aware that many supervisors have been caught cheating employees. The agency’s inspector general — its independent watchdog — has audited time records at dozens of post offices over the years.

In a 2009 letter to Rep. Paul Hodes, the inspector general’s office confirmed complaints that supervisors at three New Hampshire post offices were changing time cards, underpaying employees by nearly $30,000. A year later, the office found more than 160 suspicious changes during a year-long audit of three post offices in Ohio, North Carolina and New Hampshire. At least 75 of the changes were not properly documented. Auditors said the Postal Service did not have adequate systems in place to make sure supervisors aren’t shorting employees.

“As a result, we could not determine with certainty the reasons supervisors altered time and attendance records,” the lead auditor wrote.

The agency watchdog recommended that the Postal Service train all supervisors periodically, create another layer of approval for each time card change and do its own periodic audits.

Dean Granholm, then the Postal Service’s head of delivery and operations, agreed to follow the recommendations.

But the wage theft didn’t stop. In 2018, the inspector general alerted postal leaders that more than 100 supervisors in the Boston area had changed time records, deleting hundreds of work hours from 814 postal employees over a period of two years. The auditors reviewed a sampling of 199 changes and found that the majority of them were improperly documented.

Granholm no longer works for the agency and did not respond to a request for comment.

Finally the inspector general looked at the problem on a national level. During a six-month period in 2019, auditors discovered that managers had deleted more than 46,000 work hours from employees across the country. Investigators then examined records at seven post offices in Illinois, Florida and the Washington, D.C., region, finding that 86% of time card changes shorted employees’ pay without proper documentation.

The inspector general made similar recommendations to those from previous audits: talk to supervisors about the time card rules and establish a process to periodically review such changes. The Postal Service agreed to do it.

Mail carriers who spoke to Public Integrity say they believe supervisors keep docking their hours because managers’ annual pay raises depend on keeping overtime spending down. Union stewards and lawyers made the same claims in legal records. The Postal Service would not say whether it does in fact link pay raises to overtime spending.

Mail carriers say the wage theft will continue unless the Postal Service punishes managers doing it.

In the meantime, some carriers take pictures of their time sheets or write down their hours in a notebook. One of the unions developed a mobile app to help with that.

Campos refuses to quit her job, despite it all.

“I’ve invested so much. I don’t want to leave,” she said. “I am 59 years old. Who do you think is going to hire me?”

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Alexia Fernández Campbell is a senior reporter at the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit investigative news organization in Washington, D.C.

Alexis Fernandez Campbell, The Associated Press