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Plans Face Stiff Opposition
(This article first appeared in the January/February 2010 issue of The American Postal Worker magazine.)
Every day I come to work and work hard,” said APWU member Tom Thorpe, a postal worker since 1988. “But I might have to move.”
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Thorpe was among more than 60 union members at a spirited rally held by the side of U.S. Highway 29 on Nov. 15 protesting a plan to close down the Charlottesville (VA) P&DF. Thorpe told the Daily Progress that the proposal to shift mail processing 80 miles away to Richmond would mean an additional 800 miles of commuting each week.
Carrying signs issuing a call to “Keep the Service in C’Ville,” several USPS employees voiced similar anxieties about the prospect of forced relocation of 68 jobs, and also expressed concern about customer service, which “obviously would decline,” James Brooks, president of the Charlottesville Area APWU, told NBC-TV.
“Consolidation can result only in slower, less reliable mail service,” Brooks said. “We want to keep the business here in central Virginia so that we can serve customers in the community and stay customers ourselves.”
Seeking ‘Specifics’
More than 150 concerned Postal Service employees and customers packed a Hanover (NJ) Township municipal building for a public hearing on the possible closure of all processing operations at the West Jersey Processing & Distribution Center, where nearly 200 of the more than 300 jobs are threatened.
Direct-mail business operator Nils Redmond told the Bergen Record that his company makes several trips a day to the P&DC and the additional transportation costs would be significant. Another direct-mailer representative said she was afraid her company would lose business because it would no longer be able to peg discounts to its promise of timely delivery to its customers. Redmond concurred with that sentiment.
“We count on postal employees to let us push that 7 o’clock deadline pretty close,” Redmond said.
North Jersey Area APWU Executive Vice President Dennis Bowie said that the mail-processing facility should be kept open until the Postal Service offered evidence on how a consolidation could be economically justified. Bowie said that he had been unable to get any specifics about how savings would be realized.
U.S. Rep. Robert E. Andrews (D-NJ) is also seeking specifics about a proposed USPS facility closing. He said that the Postal Service is violating federal regulations with its failure to provide financial details to support its plan to shutter the Philadelphia Logistics and Distribution Center (Logan, NJ), where about 575 people work.
Andrews told the Philadelphia Inquirer in early November that he had sent a letter to Postmaster General John E. Potter demanding “a written, detailed and well supported explanation.”
State Sen. Stephen Sweeney accused the Postal Service of “arrogance,“ regarding its plans. “The Postal Service is supposed to be accountable to the public, so we challenge them to show us their math is correct.”
‘Mr. Potter: I Am Vexed’
Postal workers in Elmira, NY, received a 60-day notice in early November that their jobs were being excessed. “They’ve gotten their notices,” John Dahl, president of the Elmira Local APWU told the Star-Gazette . “But there are no jobs that they’re being told they can go into.”
It’s possible that some would be relocated to Rochester, 125 miles away, where the Elmira mail-sorting operation is headed, taking 55 local jobs with it.
“Mr. Potter, I am terribly vexed by the lack of attention which you and your staff have paid to this matter,” U.S. Rep. Eric Massa (D) wrote to the Postmaster General on Nov. 9.Massa asked for a meeting, and noted that a letter he had written a month earlier had been ignored. “I have made every attempt to be reasonable in my requests and straightforward in my expectations. However, none of my efforts have been taken seriously.”
Massa said that USPS staff provided only a “bureaucratic response,” which included this phrase: “[S]pecific information regarding cost savings and transportation changes are not available at this time, as the proposal ... has not been finalized.”
