Protestors Rally to Save Distribution Centers
(This article first appeared in the January/February 2013 issue of The American Postal Worker magazine.)
Protesters lined the sidewalk in front of the post office at Bay and Fahm streets in Savannah, GA, Oct. 15 to express their disapproval of the planned closure of the area’s mail processing and distribution center.
Earlier this year, the Postal Service announced plans to close the sorting and processing center at 210 Bourne Blvd., which employs more than 200 people. Fewer than half of those employed at the facility would be offered jobs elsewhere, and the mail processed at the center would be divided between Postal Service facilities in Macon, Jacksonville, FL, and Charleston, SC.
“When a letter is mailed here, it will have to be trucked out to one of these places, and then brought back into Savannah,” said Eddie Wesby, an organizer of the event and vice president of the American Postal Workers Union Local 29. “And that’s going to cause anywhere from a two- to three-day delay.”
Wesby said the first five workers were phased out at the end of 2012. By 2014, he said, the center could be completely shuttered.
That’s a problem, Wesby said, for workers who, like himself, have built their lives in Savannah. “If they move those jobs out of the community, then the people have got to go with them,” Wesby said. “We want to keep our jobs right here in Savannah and be able to live in the community that we grew up in and also provide our customers with the service they’ve grown accustomed to having.”
Though the APWU Local organized the event, the group was joined by other local postal workers’ groups, including the National Association of Letter Carriers and National Postal Mail Handlers Union. The protest also garnered the attention of some elected officials, including Chatham County District Attorney Larry Chisolm and Savannah Alderman and Mayor Pro Tem Van Johnson.
Oregon Protesters Rally to Save Mail Center
More than 100 people, including union members and elected officials, rallied Nov. 4 to protest the Postal Service’s planned closure of the Gateway mail processing center in Springfield, OR.
The closure, slated for 2014, would eliminate 68 jobs in Springfield. Some workers now employed at the facility would be relocated to another mail facility.
The center’s closure also would mean that letters and packages originating in the Eugene-Springfield area would be shipped to a larger center in Portland and sorted before being trucked back to Lane County for delivery.
That would also mean no more overnight delivery of first-class mail sent in Eugene or Springfield to another local address.
Gary Jarvis, a 35-year Postal Service employee and member of the local American Postal Workers Union, said that the Gateway mail center’s closure could be avoided if Congress acts to help the Postal Service deal with its financial issues, which are caused by an unreasonable requirement to pre-fund healthcare benefits for future retirees.
More than 140 postal workers and community supporters rallied outside the district office of Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) in Vista, CA Oct. 31 to protest the congressman’s anti-postal worker legislative proposals.