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USPS processing center downtown remains open
By Kalea Hall
YOUNGSTOWN
The U.S. Postal Service’s downtown mail-processing and distribution center remains open today.
Two years ago, however, the center, located at 99 S. Walnut St., was on USPS’ consolidation list.
“Things are good right now,” said Jim Varner, president of American Postal Workers Union Local 443. “There’s been a lot of volume working through the system. We just want to keep the plant open here and keep the people working.”
At the processing center today, there are 155 employees, according to USPS. At the plant, workers put letter mail in delivery order for carriers, do carrier routing of flat mail for delivery in the 444 and 445 ZIP code areas and perform initial sort processing of letter-sized marketing mail destined for delivery throughout the Northern Ohio District, USPS spokesman David G. Van Allen explained.
In a first phase of consolidation in 2013, the outgoing mail processing at the Youngstown processing center was consolidated into Cleveland’s operations. The second phase, which was to take place in 2015, was to move the incoming mail processing operation into the Cleveland processing and distribution center.
But that was deferred in 2016, according to Vindicator files.
In its consolidation process, USPS consolidated 141 processing centers during a first phase and 37 in the second phase.
“The decision to defer further plant consolidations was made to ensure the postal service continues to provide prompt, reliable and predictable service consistent with its published service standards,” Van Allen said in a statement.
Varner explained that a moratorium sought by the APWU deferred the consolidations, but didn’t remove any centers from the closing list. The APWU expects to see some closures start again next year. New national contract negotiations are to begin next year, too.
Varner remains hopeful the downtown processing center will stay open, and he wants to see the outgoing mail come back to Youngstown for processing and distribution.
“Cleveland is really dependent on us to take the excess from them,” he said. “We have a situation where our mail went to them and their mail went to us. We don’t think it’s efficient.”