YOUNGSTOWN Bar code sticker to go on some mailboxes

Some postal carriers are concerned that the program will cause delivery delays.
By IAN HILL
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- Some city residents will receive a letter from the U.S. Post Office in Youngstown during the next few days, but this one won't tell them how to protect themselves against anthrax.
Instead, it is asking some residents to place a bar code sticker on their mailboxes. Postal carriers will use a hand-held device to scan the bar code at certain spots on their routes, such as when they begin the route and when they go to lunch.
The device will record the time the bar code is scanned.
Purpose: Information from the scanners will be used to increase efficiency, according to Ernie Shipley, customer relations coordinator for the Youngstown Post Office. Mail carriers now use the scanners to record the delivery of certified and express mail.
The program was introduced in June. Postal officials have said carriers on 60 percent of the routes in the United States should be scanning the codes by December.
"It gives us a better gauge of where [the route's] taking them," Shipley said.
Union opposition: Chubby DiGiacomo, president of the National Association of Letter Carriers Branch 385, said he feels the scanning program is, "a waste of money" and will inconvenience carriers by forcing them to return to one mailbox several times during the day.
"You've got to scan it every time you do something," he said, adding that the National Association of Letter Carriers has filed a grievance.
DiGiacomo would not comment further and the union's national headquarters did not return calls.
Some postal carriers also have complained that the program will cause delays in delivery and limit their ability to become friends with the people on their routes.
Yet Shipley said the scanning process shouldn't cause too much trouble for the carriers. "The person's still going to be a friend of the neighborhood," he said.
Shipley said that if the resident refuses to participate with the bar code, the post office will find someone else on that route.
hill@vindy.com