43
Extra burden to carry
Postal workers worry about future of main Youngstown facility
By Karl Henkel
YOUNGSTOWN
Tim Ball moved to the Mahoning Valley last spring ready to start a new life.
Ball, a 55-year-old postal worker, was uprooted from his Pennsville, N.J., home when the U.S. Postal Service dissolved his local processing center in nearby Swedesboro.
A fresh start, a new home and a year and a half later, Ball finds himself in a similar situation.
“I was kind of excited to come to Ohio,” Ball said. “I thought I hit the jackpot. But then a year and a half later, they’re talking about closing this one.”
Ball, a manual clerk who sorts letters and packages by hand, works the midnight shift at the Youngstown processing plant, located at 99 S. Walnut St. He is one of the 500 or so local employees whose careers hang in the balance.
Postal service officials recently announced the Youngstown processing and distribution plants could close as part of a restructuring of the financially stricken operation.
More than 35,000 postal workers at 250 facilities nationwide are in the same boat, sinking from the weight of a $9.2 billion deficit that the postal service will accumulate this year.
That weight has amalgamated during the past five years, first from the $5.5 billion pension prefunding requirement mandated by the federal government in 2006, which requires 75 years worth of benefit funding in a 10-year period.
The postal service already has missed its Sept. 30 pension prefunding due date. The studies to determine which plants will close isn’t yet under way.
Workers such as Ball can now only sit and wait.
“I don’t know what to tell my daughter,” said Ball, a 10-year postal vet who has overcome a debilitating paralyzed right arm. “Either we have to move again, or daddy’s not going to have a job.”
It’s especially hard for Ball — who said he went “all in” when he moved to the Valley and bought a home in New Waterford — considering the job market.
“It’s tough for a guy that’s healthy,” he said of finding work. “You’ve got a guy with a paralyzed arm and carpal tunnel in the other arm.
“What’s my chances of getting a job? It’s going to be tough. It’s downright scary.”
The first to go
Dan Napolitan, 59, of Austintown recently celebrated his 25th anniversary with the postal service in Youngstown.
If you can call it a celebration.
A week before the big day, Sept. 13, Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe told a Senate committee that the postal service was on the brink of default.
On Sept. 15, Donahoe announced a restructuring plan that included a proposed 35,000 job cuts.
Despite his 25 years of service, all as an electronic technician in the maintenance department, Napolitan and co-workers Doug Lammert and Chuck Myers — who all started working at the post office on the same day 25 years ago — face the bleakest future.
A proposal fronted by U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa, a California Republican, would force the dismissals of the post offices’ most tenured workers.
Issa’s bill, House Bill 2309, calls for those with 30 years of service, or 20 by age 60, to be the first cuts.
For someone with 30 years of service, it’s a forced retirement of sorts. A worker with that tenure can collect a full pension.
There are plenty of those workers.
According to Christopher Shaw’s 2006 book, “Preserving the People’s Post Office,” the President’s Commission reported in 2002 that the post office had an employee turnover rate of 1.5 percent, “a quit rate that is lower that the rate for most private firms.”
But for workers such as Napolitan, who will have 20 years of service by age 60, the financial outlook is grim.
Napolitan would collect about two-thirds of his scheduled pension — about $1,000 a month.
That $1,000 a month is not enough for him to live on, because Napolitan cares for his disabled wife and developmentally disabled brother.
His pending job loss already has taken its toll.
He’s updating his Austintown property but may have to put off remodeling his two-car garage. Both updates are needed for disabled-accessibility purposes.
“If I lose this job, sure I could find work and survive by myself,” he said. “But I’d be worried about the medical care and medical benefits I might not be able to replace.”
FEW OPTIONS REMAIN
There are a couple of options to save the postal service or at least prolong its solvency, aside from Issa’s bill, which many post-office supporters say will just kill off the industry quicker.
“It’s like holding a yard sale when your house is going into foreclosure,” said Phil Rubio, a former postal worker, assistant professor of history at North Carolina A&T State and author of “There’s Always Work at the Post Office.”
The other bill in the forefront — and the one most postal workers are rooting for — is House Bill 1351.
The bill, introduced by U.S. Rep. Steven Lynch, a Democrat from Massachusetts, could allow the post office relief from its pension prefunding obligation.
The post office said without the obligations, it would have had million-dollar budget surpluses during the past few years, instead of billion-dollar deficits.
The bill, however, after its introduction in April, hasn’t made any headway, though it does have more than 200 co-sponsors.
U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan of Niles, D-17th, is one of the cosponsors of HR 1351 and agreed that the prefunding obligation needs to be changed, not just for the sake of the post office, but also for the sake of the more than half-million postal workers and the entire Mahoning Valley community.
“Our communities rely on letter carriers for delivery of prescriptions, paychecks, Social Security checks and more,” Ryan said in a statement. “Closing post offices and laying off workers will create a decline in services for businesses and consumers.”