PORTAGE, MI – United States Postal Service employees gathered Friday outside three Kalamazoo-area post offices to protest the planned closure of a mail processing facility in Oshtemo Township.
The Kalamazoo Processing and Distribution Center is scheduled to close April 18, 2015, with its work to be transferred to facilities in Grand Rapids. The center, at 3885 S. Ninth St., processes mail from throughout Southwest Michigan that originates in zip codes that begin "490" and "491."
Linda Sarratt, president of the Southwest Michigan Area local of the American Postal Workers Union and a clerk at the Oshtemo processing facility, said the community will be affected if the center closes.
"People get their medication delivered through the mail," Sarratt said, while demonstrating and handing out leaflets with other postal employees outside the Portage post office on Milham Avenue. "It's possible that they're not going to be arriving at the same time frame that you need them to."
Tom Barnum, a retiree who worked for the postal service for 42 years, including at the Oshtemo processing center, said the Ninth Street facility handles mail from about 90 communities in Southwest Michigan. He said he is concerned absorbing that work into existing facilities in Grand Rapids that might slow delivery, since mail being sent and received within the Kalamazoo area must now go north for processing before coming back to Kalamazoo.
Dan Ivens, a USPS employee for 21 years, said the postal service is the greatest value in America and its delivery standards should not be reduced.
"You take the cost of a stamp and put that in your car for gas and see how far that'll take you," Ivens said. "You can send a letter to Alaska, or Hawaii, or wherever, and I doubt you could get to the end of the block with the amount of gas you could put in your car (for the cost of a postage stamp). You can't do that with any other business.
"I just want to support everybody else that works for the postal service and show (the postmaster general) that we're all still together on this deal," he said.
The postal workers hoped to send a message to both the postmaster general and the USPS Board of Governors to urge them against the closure.
Members of the American Postal Workers Union-Local 143 and the National Mail Handlers Postal Union also planned midday protests Friday at Kalamazoo's main post office on Miller Road and the Westwood branch on Drake Road.
The USPS announced plans more than two years ago to consolidate the work done at 82 U.S. locations into other facilities, including at the processing and distribution center in Oshtemo Township. The consolidation plan was put on hold in 2012 but that moratorium was lifted in June.