Thursday, February 26, 2015
YOUNGSTOWN
The National American Postal Workers Union has fronted more effort to prevent the closing of the local mail processing and distribution center at 99 S. Walnut St.
On Thursday, APWU launched the ‘My Mail, My Ohio’ website to show the impact on the shuttering of the Youngstown, Dayton, Toledo and Akron U.S. Postal Service processing centers.
The four centers are a part of 82 centers nationwide expected to close this year.
“We are at a place of urgency with the issue and that is why we are urging [community members] to contact congressmen,” said Myra Grubbs, spokesperson for the national APWU.
Toledo’s processing and distribution center is tentatively slated to close in April, and so is the Akron center. Dayton and Youngstown are scheduled to close by July.
USPS consolidated 141 mail-processing facilities in 2012 and 2013. The postal service expects those moves to generate $750 million in annual savings.
There are more than 100 employees at the Youngstown facility, but that does not mean all of those positions will be affected by the closure.
USPS has said it is committed to finding “landing spots” for employees, which generally means within a 50-mile radius of Youngstown, but there are exceptions.