Four Oregon mail sorting centers closing

By Associated Press Published: Feb 23, 2012 at 10:21 PM PDT
Four Oregon mail sorting centers closing
The Post Office on 25th Street SE in Salem, Ore., is pictured in this Sept. 16, 2011, file photo. The U.S. Postal Service will move mail processing operations from Salem to Portland. (AP Photo/Statesman Journal, Danielle Peterson)

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — The U.S. Postal Service said Thursday it plans to close four mail-sorting centers in Oregon due to the decline in people using first-class mail.

Processing and distribution facilities in Salem, Eugene, Bend and Pendleton will close, and operations will be moved to the facility near the airport in Portland starting as soon as mid-May, the agency said.

The sorting center in Medford will remain open. Post offices where people buy stamps and conduct other retail business were not immediately affected.

The closures will eliminate 164 jobs for projected savings of $12.9 million, Spokesman Peter Hass said. Just how many people will actually be out of work is unknown, as some will be offered openings elsewhere. The agency has eliminated 140,000 jobs nationwide in the past four years without layoffs, he said.

Letters mailed across town in the four cities will take two days instead of one, but longer distance deliveries will still be made in three days, Hass said.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said in a statement he was afraid the changes would threaten Oregon's vote-by-mail system by increasing the time it would for ballots to go out to voters and be returned to county clerks.

Due to a 25 percent drop in first-class mail since 2006, the Postal Service is closing more than 260 mail processing centers nationwide, which is projected to eliminate 35,000 jobs.

Hass said a moratorium agreed to by the Postal Service to give Congress time to consider alternatives will delay the consolidation effort until sometime after May 15. Employees at the sorting centers have been notified, and the process of deciding who goes where has begun.

The closures mean the elimination of 77 jobs in Salem, for savings of $5.8 million; 17 jobs in Bend for savings of $2.1 million; 68 jobs in Eugene for savings of $4.4 million; and two jobs in Pendleton for savings of $555,837, Hass said.

The decision was based on a review of closings announced last fall.

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press.