{"id":242,"date":"2009-04-21T18:32:00","date_gmt":"2009-04-21T23:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/?p=242"},"modified":"2009-04-21T18:33:16","modified_gmt":"2009-04-21T23:33:16","slug":"apwu-led-consolidation-protests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/2009\/04\/21\/apwu-led-consolidation-protests\/","title":{"rendered":"APWU-Led Consolidation Protests"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\"APWU\"<\/a>
APWU<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

April 20, 2009<\/p>\n

Owners of small businesses, workers, and other concerned citizens continue to speak out at protests and at public meetings staged by the Postal Service to \u201cshare initial results\u201d of Area Mail Processing studies.<\/p>\n

At one of the noisier of such gatherings, several business owners and public officials in Wilkes-Barre disagreed sharply with the USPS conclusion that moving mail processing operations 25 miles away to Scranton would leave the economy of Luzerne County unharmed.<\/p>\n

The Wilkes-Barre City Council unanimously approved a resolution that opposes \u201cany and all efforts\u201d to close the USPS facility. \u201cWe have employers that really rely on getting their mail out,\u201d Mayor Thomas Leighton said at the meeting. \u201cThat\u2019s why it\u2019s important for the future of the city, while we\u2019re going under revitalization, that we maintain this kind of service.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some officials said that the USPS focus on its own fiscal woes is affecting its decisions on the community level. The \u201cnegative local impact\u201d was a recurring theme voiced at the public meeting.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt seems to me there is entirely too much concentration on the internal financing of the Postal Service itself,\u201d U.S. Rep. Paul E. Kanjorski (D), told the daily Times-Leader. \u201cWe just have to take a great deal of more time to analyze what that impact will be.\u201d<\/p>\n

Representatives from the offices of Pennsylvania\u2019s senators, Robert Casey (D) and Arlen Specter (R), and a representative from Rep. Chris Carney (D), also said that the consolidation proposal would be bad for the community.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy pick on us?\u201d said John Kishel, president of APWU\u2019s Wilkes-Barre Area Local, noting that nothing in the Postal Service presentation implied that improved efficiency or mailing service would result from the shift in mail-processing operations.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt does neither,\u201d Kishel said at the meeting. \u201cWhy come down here when we have dedicated employees and supervisors whose goal is to make sure that service standards are kept up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Approximately 100 of the 230 workers in the Wilkes-Barre facility could be moved to Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Harrisburg, and even as far away as Detroit if the consolidation plan is carried out.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, public officials, small-business owners, and \u201cordinary\u201d citizens joined postal workers at meetings protesting USPS mail-processing proposals elsewhere. Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

April 20, 2009 Owners of small businesses, workers, and other concerned citizens continue to speak out at protests and at public meetings staged by the Postal Service to \u201cshare initial results\u201d of Area Mail Processing studies. At one of the noisier of such gatherings, several business owners and public officials in Wilkes-Barre disagreed sharply with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-apwu-news","last_archivepost"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":247,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242\/revisions\/247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}