Holidays tough on postal workers worried about plant closing

The U.S. Postal Service continues to lose money, more than $5 billion in 2010. Now the federal agency is looking for ways to cut costs, and Tulsa's main postal sorting facility could pay the price.

Hundreds who work at the sorting facility near E. 21st Street and S. 91st E. Ave. could lose their jobs if the facility closes. The uncertainty is causing a lot of anxiety for employees there during the holiday season.

If the proposal to close the plant is approved, 173 of the 573 employees there would lose their jobs altogether. The other 400 would be transferred to a sorting facility in Oklahoma City.

Stacy Boyd has worked at the sorting facility for the past 15 years. But with fear she could lose her job, Boyd is having to scale back her traditional holiday season plans.

"It hits us in the pocketbook," Boyd said. "I mean, you're not going to go out and be extravagant. You're going to have to cut back. You're going to have to be really realistic about what the future's gonna hold. So, I would imagine everybody's like me; they're going to be a lot more conservative with their Christmas gifts this year."

During the USPS holiday season Boyd and most other postal employees work 12-hour days seven days a week to make sure the rest of us get our holiday gifts on time. Boyd says it's normally a time when postal workers come together and bond, knowing they're all in it together. But this year, Boyd says it's going to be much tougher to put in that kind of work, when she knows she could lose her job as soon as the holiday rush is over.

But if the sorting facility closes down, it won't just affect Boyd and her 572 co-workers. It will affect everybody in the region.

"All of the mail will go to Oklahoma City, get processed, and then come back to Tulsa," Boyd said. "So, if you mail something to your next door neighbor, it's gonna go to Oklahoma City, get processed, and come back to Tulsa, and it will take two to three days."

Boyd says almost all regional overnight mail will be a thing of the past. And all other regional mail service would be significantly slowed down. That could be a big problem for businesses that rely on the postal service, utility companies and municipal governments trying to get bills out on time, and everyone else trying to mail checks to pay their bills on time.

Boyd also says if the sorting facility closes, Tulsa's regional economy would lose an estimated $20 million in combined wages from those employees who would lose their jobs.

But Boyd says it's not too late for people in the Tulsa area to fight the facility's closure.

"This is America's postal service," Boyd said. "It's not a corporation that has a CEO and a board of directors and shareholders. This is a government agency that belongs to the people, that is in place to serve people. And if people demand service, they're going to get service."

Boyd and other postal workers will hold a rally on Black Friday, November 25, starting at 10 a.m. near the Best Buy on E. 71st Street near Highway 169 to bring more attention to the USPS plan to close the facility.

And on Thursday, December 1, there will be a public hearing at 6:30 p.m. on the Tulsa Tech Campus near E. 31st Street and S. Memorial, at which citizens can voice their opinions on the possible closure to regional officials with the USPS.

For now, the USPS is studying all of its options to cut costs. The formal recommendations that come out of the study will be released before the end of the year, but likely won't be officially decided upon until late January or February.

Nationwide, there are more than 250 sorting facilities facing closure, which could eliminate more than 35,000 jobs in all.

Some of the other proposed options for cutting postal costs could include cutting Saturday mail service, and eliminating door-to-door service in favor of putting mailbox clusters in neighborhoods to cut down on mail delivery time.