Mail-sorting facilities in Tacoma, Olympia and Everett would be closed and their work moved to a central facility in the Seattle area under a budget-cutting plan the U.S. Postal Service rolled out this week.
That plan, still under study, could end assured overnight delivery of first class mail among cities in the Puget Sound area, the Postal Service acknowledged Tuesday.
In Tacoma, the post office is asking for public reaction to its proposal to shut down the Tacoma Mail Processing Center at 4001 S. Pine St. near the Tacoma Mall. The Postal Service is also proposing to close the Olympia processing center at 717 76th Ave. S.W.
The Postal Service will hold a public meeting on the Tacoma shutdown plan at 5:30 p.m. Nov. 17 at the Tacoma Main Library, 1102 Tacoma Ave. S. A similar meeting is planned for Olympia, but a specific time and place have not been announced.
The closure proposal would affect about 285 workers at the Tacoma facility and 118 in Olympia.
Postal Service spokesman Ernie Swanson said that while some first-class mail might be delivered overnight under the Postal Service’s savings plan, most first-class mail would be delivered the second day. The Postal Service is seeking to erase a $10 billion budget shortfall by cutting employment, consolidating facilities and closing little-used post offices nationwide.
The Postal Service’s union contracts prohibit it from laying off workers with six years or more of service, said Charles Smith, vice president of the Puget Sound local of the American Postal Workers Union. But the Postal Service could use retirement incentives and attrition to cut its work force here, he said.
Under preliminary plans the Postal Service announced to Tacoma workers, their work force would be reduced by 139 workers, and between 140 and 150 would be reassigned to the Seattle mail processing facility. That facility is located in Tukwila near Boeing Field. The Seattle facility has excess capacity because mail volumes have fallen by about 20 percent nationwide since 2006.
Smith said that under the proposal outlined to local workers, the Seattle facility would move to a 24-hour operation from the present one-shift arrangement.
The public post offices located in the processing centers would remain open even if the sorting facilities are closed, said the Postal Service. “The Evergreen Station would definitely remain open,” said Swanson.
The Tacoma, Olympia and Everett mail sorting facilities are among 252 sorting facilities nationwide the post office is considering closing down. Smith said the post office’s preliminary long-range plan is to reduce the number of mail sorting facilities in Washington to just two, one in the Seattle area and the other in Spokane.
Swanson said that the decision about whether the closings make economic sense likely won’t be made until “well into 2012.” The local recommendations will go to the Postal Service’s Denver regional office first and then be forwarded to Washington, D.C., for scrutiny.
John Gillie: 253-597-8663
john.gillie@thenewstribune.com
