USPS says it will pause changes to mail delivery system that include South Charleston facility

United States Postal Service officials discuss plans for changes to the Charleston Processing and Distribution Center at a Feb. 14 public meeting in Charleston. (Lori Kersey | West Virginia Watch)

The United States Postal Service says it will pause changes to the mail delivery service that include downsizing a South Charleston mail facility. 

In a letter to Michigan Sen. Gary Peterson, chairman of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, earlier this week, U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy wrote that he would pause the movement of processing operations associated with mail processing facility reviews taking place at nearly 60 of 427 processing plants until at least Jan. 1, 2025.

“Even then, we will not advance these efforts without advising you of our plans to do so, and then only at a moderated pace of implementation,” DeJoy wrote. 

The letter came in response to a letter Peterson and several other senators, including Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va. sent to the postmaster last week expressing concern over the impacts that changes will have on timely mail delivery in communities across the country, including West Virginia.

The Postal Service announced last month it would proceed with a plan to shrink the Charleston Processing and Distribution Center and transfer some of its operations to the Pittsburgh Processing and Distribution Center and the Pennwood Place Processing and Distribution Center in Warrendale, Pennsylvania. 

The center would transition to a local processing center as a part of the postal service’s 10-year “Delivering for America” plan to improve organizational and operational and make the agency efficient. The change would result in 23 net position losses and one managerial role loss. None of the losses will be what the postal service refers to as “career” positions, the postal service said. A total of 41 “career” positions and four management positions, in addition to non-career jobs, will be transferred out of the South Charleston facility.

Reached Wednesday, Tim Holstein, vice president of the American Postal Workers Union local 133, noted that the postal service has never given a timeline for the downsizing of the South Charleston plant. Holstein said so far, the facility has essentially laid off four temporary workers by reducing their number of hours and cut back on overtime hours, leading to the facility being inundated with mail waiting to be processed. 

“If you do those two things, what gives? And that’s service,” Holstein said. “We’re not being able to process mail to the extent that we were before. So ultimately, the customer is the one that’s losing. They’re the ones getting cheated because they’re paying for a service that they’re not receiving.”

Holstein said the union is preparing to file a grievance on behalf of the four workers. 

While the postal service has not yet transferred some of the facility’s operation to Pennsylvania, mail from the facility that was piled up has previously been trucked to other mail plants only to be returned to South Charleston later, he said.

“When I’ll tell you there’s mail that’s piled up, I’m talking stacked, double stack, and it’s not just, letter mail or bills or packages, we’re talking political mail,” he said. “[Tuesday] was the election. I promise you that if I would have stayed in that building past my time, when I left yesterday, I would bet my paycheck that there was political mail that was in that building that did not get delivered in a timely fashion.”

In a statement Tuesday, Manchin said he’s glad that DeJoy heed the repeated calls to put the changes on hold. 

“It is essential we understand the full impact of these proposed changes, especially on our hardworking postal employees, before moving forward on their implementation,” he said. “I will continue working with the Postal Service and my bipartisan colleagues to protect reliable mail service for all West Virginians and Americans.”

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