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The Catawba Valley community will have a chance to speak out Thursday on a U.S. Postal Service proposal to eliminate 32 outgoing mail-processing jobs and send the work to Greensboro.
No one will be laid off, a Postal Service spokeswoman said. Shifting the work would keep idle machinery in the large Greensboro center running and reduce costs by $1.6 million annually.
Hickory-area postal workers, however, say they might have to take out-of-town jobs and argue service could be delayed by shipping the mail 80 miles to Greensboro.
The meeting starts at 6 p.m. at the auditorium of the Hickory Arts & Science Center, 243 Third Ave. N.E. Doors open at 5:30 p.m.
The Postal Service is doing dozens of similar efficiency studies nationally, including whether to shift processing work from small plants in Kinston and Rocky Mount to larger centers in Fayetteville and Raleigh.
After most studies, the mail moved. In 21 of the 26 national studies already complete, the postal service decided to proceed with its consolidation.
More efficient operations are vital in cutting the $7 billion the Postal Service lost last year, said spokeswoman Enola Rice. Mail volume is down nationally 14 percent over last year as more people pay their bills online and use e-mail, she said.
The recession also has reduced mailings from corporations such as bank, credit card and insurance companies.
Rice said Greensboro already processes outgoing mail from the Hickory operation on Saturdays and holidays. "We have done that for six years, and it works well," Rice said.
About 20 local governments oppose eliminating 32 jobs from the Hickory Processing and Distribution Facility, which employs about 200 people in a Conover plant. The rest of the facility's jobs would remain.
Opponents include Hickory, Conover, Newton, Catawba County, Morganton, Valdese, Maiden, Lenoir, Hildebran, as well as Catawba, Alexander and Avery counties.
The area has an unemployment rate of about 15 percent and cannot afford to lose jobs, Hickory Mayor Rudy Wright told City Council members recently.
The shift would affect ZIP codes that begin with these three digits: 280-285, 287-289 and 297.
Doug Woodward, the local union steward of the American Postal Workers Union, challenges the Postal Service's statement that mail would not be delayed.
"There is no way they can get the mail to Greensboro, process it and get it back into the system without a delay," Woodward said.
More jobs would be lost, he said. "Once they take one shift, they don't stop until they devour the whole plant."
The Hickory operation recently was named the most efficient in the nation in processing mail. "That is why we don't understand they're moving our jobs to Greensboro," Woodward said.
About 20,000 postal workers have taken early retirement nationally and some of those jobs would be filled by Hickory-area employees if the outgoing mail work is shifted to Greensboro, Rice said. "We have never laid anyone off," she said. "We reduce numbers through attrition."
