NOW THEY WANT TO TAKE AWAY YOUR POST OFFICE

AMERICAN POSTAL WORKERS - From Waterbury to Waco, from western
Pennsylvania to Pacific Palisades, public officials, consumers, and
local businesses are expressing alarm at wide-ranging plans to
consolidate "some operations" at postal facilities around the country.

In Waco, TX, approximately 250 jobs are in jeopardy because of the USPS
plan to relocate the city's mail processing and distribution facilities
85 to 100 miles away to Fort Worth and Austin. "We serve a wide area,"
said Ruby Harrison, vice president of APWU's Waco Local in an interview
with the Waco Tribune-Herald. "If you're mailing a bill across town,
that bill will have to be trucked to either Austin or Fort Worth to get
postmarked and then be trucked back to Waco and delivered."

In Freeport, IL, Gregg Voiles, president of APWU's Rockford Area Local,
was puzzled by the plan to move processing to Palatine, about 90 miles
away. "Everything would go to Palatine, even though our production
numbers are better," he said. "It doesn't make any sense at all."

U.S. Rep. Don Manzullo (R) showed his concern about the move of the
Freeport sorting operation and the closing of small, rural post offices
by meeting with postal officials. "It wasn't a very pleasant meeting,"
said a Manzullo spokesman. Manzullo did extract a commitment to postpone
plans, the spokesman said, so that concerned citizens could gather
evidence to support a no-move proposition.

The Iowa Senate on Jan. 18 passed a resolution to keep a [distribution
center] in Sioux City, IA, rather than send processing, the postmark,
and jobs nearly 90 miles west to Sioux Falls, SD. The resolution, which
passed unanimously, noted that this is not just a "Siouxland" issue, but
an all-Iowa issue.

Current arrangements, the resolution said, result in "one-day service
locally and national service in two days. [The loss] would degrade
service to two days for the Siouxland area and to three days for other
parts of the country."

In Pacific Palisades, CA, residents have been complaining for months
about the effects of a consolidation that has already occurred. In an
interview Jan. 18 with the Palisadian Post, Community Council Chairman
Kurt Toppel expressed exasperation with high-ranking postal officials:
"For over three months now, we have tried unsuccessfully to have post
office management address our council, and thus our community, to
respond to specific problems."

Toppel said that he had been told by the staff of U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman
(D) that "so many complaints have been received that Waxman has started
an official inquiry into the matter."

As a Postal Service public affairs spokesperson said in an Aberdeen
American News story about an Area Mail Processing study of the Aberdeen
(SD) facility. "There is no community component with the study. It's
just an internal look at mail processing and network operations. The
study is being conducted by postal officials, and does not call for
public comment."

For a look at a way to fight consolidation plans with what the
Bloomington (IN) Local APWU calls "all available means," visit (An AMP
study of Bloomington mail processing is likely to result in the shift of
operations to Indianapolis, 45 miles away.)

http://www.apwu.org/news/webart/2006/webart-0606-consol-pubsupport-060125.htm


HOW BLOOMINGTON IS FIGHTING FOR ITS POST OFFICE
www.bloomapwu.com

MIKE CAUSEY, DC EXAMINER - As Americans become increasingly mobile,
moving from state to state, and as the population mix becomes more
diverse, some people suffer from an identify crisis. The result: We owe
our allegiance not to race, religion or region, but to our ZIP code. In
fact, the pickup line (I have been led to understand) in trendy D.C.
nightspots is no longer "Hi there. I bet you're a Libra, right?" It has
been replaced (again, so I have been told) by "So, what's your ZIP
code?". . .

ZIP codes and postmarks are important and have a definite meaning for
many folks. I know people in the Washington area who live in one place
but who drive out to Potomac or McLean in hopes that their outgoing mail
will get the high-class postmark those addresses confer. And there are
businesses located in the suburbs that either have a Washington, D.C.,
post office box or other mailing address so they can create the illusion
of having a corporate office in the nation's capital. . .

The importance of postmarks and ZIP codes may help out hundreds of U.S.
Postal Service employees whose jobs may be moved, or abolished, thanks
to consolidations. The USPS, for example, is considering moving more
than 200 jobs from Waco, Texas, to either Austin or Fort Worth. Similar
consolidations are in the planning stage in California, Connecticut,
Indiana, Pennsylvania and Illinois. The American Postal Workers Union is
using our affair with postmarks and ZIP codes to fight proposed
consolidations

http://dcexaminer.com/articles/2006/01/30/news/d_c_news/08federal30.txt