SALISBURY -- The U.S. Postal Service is targeting postal
facilities for consolidation in an effort to cut costs.
The Salisbury post office on Route 50 and the post office in
Easton are not on the list of 30 facilities currently being
considered, but they are on the list provided by the USPS to the
Postal Rate Commission in July 2005 of 139 potential candidates that
will be considered in the next five or six years, said Deborah
Yackley, spokeswoman for USPS.
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The only Maryland office
included in the list of 30 locations is in Cumberland. The idea
behind consolidation is to shut down the processing and sorting
operations at certain offices and move them to larger facilities to
cut costs and make the process more efficient, Yackley said. It is
possible that Cumberland's processing operations could be moved to
the Frederick location.
If the Salisbury and Easton offices were approved for
consolidation in the future, the processing and sorting operations
would move to the Baltimore office, while window service and city
and rural carriers' jobs would stay at the facility, she said.
Consolidation of Salisbury and Easton locations would have a
major impact on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, said local
representatives of the American Postal Workers Union.
Postal workers' jobs might change and some may be asked to drive
to and from Baltimore, said Beverly Collins, vice president of the
local APWU. She said families would be affected if a parent had to
make such a long commute. About 60 people work at the Salisbury
location and 100 at the Easton office.
Moving the processing out of Salisbury could also create delays
in mail delivery service, she said. Instead of having a one-day turn
around, mail would have to leave the Lower Shore for Baltimore,
causing delivery to take an additional two to three days, impacting
people who pay bills through the mail.
"People don't want to have to send their bills out earlier to
make sure the electric is paid on time," Collins said. "A lot of
people live off of their pay checks and depend on fast, efficient
service."
Yackley said mail delivery service is the USPS's top priority as
management considers which offices can be consolidated.
"We don't want to cause delays," Yackley said. "We wouldn't want
to move the mail to a place that would save in the processing costs
but cost more to deliver."
The local APWU members will be handing out leaflets and providing
other information to interested people at the Salisbury and Easton
offices Thursday.
"Our main goal is to make the public aware that they are on the
list and what this could mean to them," Collins said.
Yackley said the USPS is considering the consolidation plan from
a business standpoint because mail is dropping as people tend to
e-mail and pay bills online. The USPS has recently come out of a
three- or four-year-long deficit, said Roland Scheck, editor of the
APWU's publication The Shore Express. Last year the USPS earned $11
billion, up from $3 billion the year before by implementing
strategies such as increasing rates.
The USPS is still conducting a feasibility study in order to
determine which sites could afford to have processing operations
shut down. The Cumberland facility might shut down its first class
mail sorting process as early as next December, she said. She said
the USPS has no problem with the local APWU members picketing about
this issue.
"It's perfectly within their rights to do so," Yackley said.
"They have their own reason for why they're doing it and that's
fine."
kcrowell@dmg.gannett.com
410-845-4655
delmarvanow.com
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