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Consolidation Plans Challenged
(This article first appeared in the January/February 2008 issue of The American Postal Worker magazine.)
Prompted in large part by an APWU advertising campaign, citizens of Flint and Detroit spoke out last fall against the consolidation of mail-processing operations into a new facility situated between the two cities, which are 65 miles apart.
“We couldn’t understand why the post office would want to consolidate us when our numbers are so good,” said Flint Area Local President Debbie Lutz. “So our members engaged in grassroots communication with family, friends and neighbors that informed them of the likelihood that mail service would deteriorate if the proposal was implemented.” A majority of the members of the Flint City Council objected to the consolidation in a Sept. 19 letter to the postmaster.
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Dwight Boudreaux confers with APWU members at the public meeting in Detroit. |
At a public meeting on Oct. 22, USPS representatives tried to defend the Area Mail Processing study that led to the proposal to consolidate approximately 100 Flint-based postal jobs into the soon-to-be-completed Michigan Metroplex P&DC. Among the 200 attendees were community members who spoke out against the plans.
U.S. Rep Dale Kildee (D) had taken part in APWU-organized informational picketing last summer. “Mail is going to be slowed down” if the proposal is implemented, Kildee told ABC-TV in August. “They know that and they admit that.” Lutz accompanied Kildee when he met with three of the top people in Postmaster General John E. Potter’s office in late October.
Approximately 200 people also attended a public meeting in Detroit, the day after the Flint gathering. “We got our members and retirees involved,” said Detroit District Area Local President Dwight Boudreaux, “and we were in contact with elected officials, including U.S. Rep. John Conyers and U.S. Rep. Carolyn Cheeks- Kilpatrick.”
“How can Detroit not have a postmark?” Boudreaux asked during the public forum. “It is a major American city — it hosted the 2006 Super Bowl.” GM headquarters, he noted, is a block-and-a-half from the mail processing center.
“The radio and TV ads alerted citizens to the danger of deteriorated mail service,” said APWU President William Burrus. “The USPS proposals were developed without any input from the American people. It’s part of a covert plan to give the big mailers reduced postage costs at the expense of all others.”
The grassroots level activism in Michigan coincided with revived public-awareness efforts in Canton, OH, and The Bronx, which are among nine locations where postal-facility consolidation proposals are pending.
At a public hearing in October, Canton city officials, including Mayor Janet Weir Creighton, posed hard questions about a proposed consolidation of mail-processing to Akron. Aside from losing jobs, Canton also would lose its postmark on first-class mail.
In a unanimously endorsed resolution, the city’s council not only opposed the consolidation, but asked for a Government Accounting Office investigation because “there has been no review by any outside agency in regards to feasibility.”
As with consolidation proposals elsewhere, local union officials have consistently disputed USPS claims of savings. Critics of a plan to move Bronx mail-processing operations into midtown Manhattan contend that the new arrangement would negatively affect both boroughs.
Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D), whose district includes the gaining neighborhood, called the proposal “unacceptable” and said that USPS savings would be more than counter-balanced by the potential for delay in mail delivery to the Bronx, inconvenience to reassigned workers, and increased congestion in Manhattan.
“It shouldn’t be done, and the post office hasn’t been honest about it,” said Nadler in reference to an audit report that the Postal Service received in July. Management waited nearly three months to release the report, and gave no advance notice to elected officials, the public, or the APWU.
APWU campaigns have played a large role in derailing many of the other proposals nationwide. In 2006 and 2007, 37 consolidation initiatives were terminated, placed on hold, or reversed.
