Postal workers to protest possible change in mail processing

By MARC B. GELLER
The Monitor

McALLEN, October 26, 2006 — Local postal workers plan to stage an informational picket this morning at the McAllen Post Of-fice to voice their concerns about an ongoing U.S. Postal Service study that many worry will lead to costly mail delays.

The demonstration is part of a national day of picketing organized by the American Postal Workers Union and timed to take place right before this year’s mid-term elections.

“It’s not a work stoppage or anything like that,” said Postal Service spokesman Sam Bolen. “We don’t anticipate any problems with service, and we should be adequately staffed there.”

The demonstration follows the revelation early this year that the Postal Service was exploring the possibility of lowering costs and boosting efficiency by consolidating the Rio Grande Valley’s outgoing mail processing operation to Corpus Christi.

“That plan that could delay our service up to a week,” said Roy Gutierrez Jr., president of American Postal Workers Union Local 4325.

“We’re blowing the whistle,” he said.

The McAllen Post Office — central processing facility for every city in the Valley — is one of about 55 facilities across the coun-try where the Postal Service has launched what it calls “area mail processing,” or AMP, studies since October 2005.

Local mail sent on the weekend already goes to Corpus Christi and is then re-routed back to this area. Packages sent after 5 p.m. on Friday have taken as many as 10 days to make it back to McAllen, according to information U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett’s office released earlier this year.

Many people across the Valley, including some in fairly high places, worry that the local consolidation study may simply be de-signed to justify an existing Postal Service decision to go forward with a plan to route even more mail to Corpus Christi.

Postal Service officials have consistently denied that assertion. They maintain that the studies are needed to assess how to best make use of excess capacity created in recent years as increased automation and technologies such as e-mail have cut into the volume of first-class mail.

“We’re always looking for ways to improve our productivity and increase our efficiency,” Bolen said. “Our objective is to operate the Postal Service as efficiently as possible and ensure it remains it a viable organization well into the future.”

Postal Service officials say the public will be able to offer input on the consolidation study once it is complete. That completion date, however, appears to be a moving target.

Jim Coultress, a Postal Service spokesman in San Antonio, projected in late February that the study would be done within two months, and Bolen said in late May that he expected it to be finished by late summer.

Now, with October preparing to melt into November, the Postal Service seems to have given up making such projections on the study’s completion.

“I honestly couldn’t tell you,” Bolen said. “I just decline to speculate.”