Postal workers to picket post office today

Bloomington is not the only Indiana city that may lose its standard "overnight" same-area postal service, but local postal workers are still concerned with the loss of speedy delivery for local Hoosiers sending and receiving mail.\nUSPS officials revealed a list of 139 American cities -- including Lafayette, Muncie, Kokomo and Gary -- that may lose current postal service standards in the name of the company's bottom line, although Southern Indiana's 474 zip code is still the only area under current evaluation. In protest of the USPS plan, local postal workers are picketing Bloomington's Main Post Office at 11:30 a.m. today on Fourth Street, in hopes of drawing community attention to their plight for maintaining current postal service standards for the hundreds of thousands of Hoosiers they serve.\n"The study that's being done is to take the mail that's collected in collection boxes and at the windows, and instead of processing it here in Bloomington for this area -- the 474 zip code area like we normally do -- the study is to determine if they can take it all to Indianapolis, basically a 100 mile round trip, process it and get it back down here," said 25-year postal employee Kevin McCaffery, a spokesman for the American Postal Workers Union 2122 local chapter. "The postal service is going to say, I'm contending they're going to say, 'It's to save money for the postal service' ... But our big gripe is there's no way we're going to get mail under the current standard from Paoli and French Lick, here, to Bloomington first, then trucked to Indy, and then processed up there, back down here, reprocessed in Bloomington and then out to Paoli and French Lick overnight like we do now, currently, in Bloomington."\nIf the USPS moves ahead with its proposal, all 474 zip code letters and packages mailed within the 474 zip code to other 474 zip code recipients will travel more than 50 miles to Indianapolis for processing, before the mail is shipped 50 miles back to Bloomington for reprocessing and then distribution within the same 474 zip code area.\nThe 474 zip code area covers 1,500 square miles in Southern Indiana with Bloomington as the primary hub, north to Quincy, Ind., east to Nashville, Ind., south to French Lick and west to Jasonville. Also snuggled within the 42 Hoosier cities and towns representing the 474 zip code area are 50 rural post offices to further facilitate local processing and distribution in a speedy fashion. \nMcCafffery said the proposed consolidation is a means for USPS officials to offset "big" discounts to large businesses and corporations, at the expense in time and convenience for small businesses and Hoosier families. \n"(The U.S. Postal Service's) effort is to consolidate the operation at the expense of service. What I mean to say by that is 'the person that drops mail in the mailbox is to me not given a fair shake on how important it is to serve them,'" he said. "The big mailers, discount mailers, are the ones that are getting all the breaks in service, and the person that drops their mail in the mailbox is the one that's going to lose the service if this proposal is enacted ... We're going from what used to be all about a service-oriented industry -- 'how to get mail there as fast as we can' -- to, well, 'we're not going to worry about the little people, we'll take care of the big people.'"\nMonroe County Board of Commissioner officials signed a proclamation Feb. 17 to decry the proposal as not acting to serve "Monroe County's best interest" because the "economy of the local communities would be negatively impacted" among other consequences. Common Council officials signed that same resolution against the USPS plan March 1, and Mayor Mark Kruzan added his name to the community member concern list March 2.\nRep. Mike Sodrel, R-9th, sent a letter to USPS District Manager Charles Howe and USPS Acting District Manager Kelvin Mack stating his opposition to the Area Mail Processing Feasibility Study because the plan would "negatively alter services provided by (Bloomington's) facility to Indiana residents."\n"Shifting mail operations to the Indianapolis location would add a minimum of one hour and 45 minutes of transit time in the processing of mail. The additional time added to the operation would be a less efficient process and could add additional costs to the USPS due to higher fuel and transportation costs," Sodrel wrote in the March 3 letter. "This increase in processing time would deteriorate service to the USPS customers in this facility's service area ... The presence of (Indiana) University coupled with the added processing time and the deterioration of service would negate any appearance of a benefit concluded by this study."\nEven though USPS attempts to consolidate Southern Indiana mail processing failed in 1991 because no significant savings were found, USPS officials began another survey of the situation in December 2005 to see if the financial scene had changed. At that time, USPS announced its intention to evaluate about 40 cities for postal service consolidation and it has since dismissed five such plans and approved 10.\nUSPS officials have not announced their progress or conclusions in regards to Bloomington's 474 zip code consolidation, but McCaffery said he fears the Feasibility Study is a forgone conclusion.\n"By keeping the local mail local, we have people here who live in these very communities that we serve, and we know the mail better. There's so much more of a personal touch from people that work this mail in this area than Indianapolis could give us," he said. "In December they told us it was pretty much a done deal anyway, so we think they are going to make the numbers fit the study and not really look at the big picture of service ... I know some people don't think the mail is important, whether it gets there in a day or two, but we do as workers -- we make every effort to get that stuff out and turn it around, especially overnight for our 474 area"