While the United States Postal Service has not officially announced the consolidation that would take mail processing from the Bronx to lower Manhattan, the local union and the larger Bronx community, including Congressman Eliot Engel, have already united against its consequences.

In the consolidation, which the USPS says is not imminent but definitely being discussed, mail normally processed at the General Post Office, at 149th Street and the Grand Concourse, also known as the Detached Mail Unit and Hail New York Truck Transfer Center, will now be trucked to the Morgan Processing and Distribution Center, at 29th Street and 9th Avenue.

The General Post Office building in the Bronx would remain open for window service, but the entire borough’s mail would be processed downtown, adding truck traffic to an already congested area, said Chuck Zlatkin, vice president of the New York Metro Area Postal Workers Union.

“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” Engel told postal workers at a rally against the consolidation recently.

“My office already receives complaints of poor mail service,” Engel added later in a statement. “Moving mail processing out of the Bronx will only make it worse.”

Since the union was notified on Dec. 20, 2005, the “study,” as it is referred to by the USPS, has grown from 40 communities to 139 facing similar cutbacks, Zlatkin said.

Pat McGovern, a USPS spokesperson, said the study is now under review in Washington, and is still far from becoming a reality.

“But, the Morgan facility has already set aside space for the machines,” Zlatkin said.

As a result of the relocation of these processes, “the entire borough’s mail will be delayed,” Zlatkin said.

The USPS, however, does not expect delays, McGovern said. “The distance between the two facilities is approximately 10 miles,” she said. “There are rumors of mail being delayed something like two days. It’s unreasonable for them to speculate that because the distance is so small.”

The Union claims that 450 Bronx postal workers will lose their jobs, because “the machines will move to Morgan, but the people won’t,” Zlatkin said.

McGovern countered that no postal workers would lose their jobs, and the relocation process would occur under the national protocol already agreed upon by the USPS and the union.

“The operation has fewer than 500,” McGovern said, “but as to how – if this even happens – they’d be redistributed, I couldn’t begin to speculate.”

Although the potential move is unpopular with the union, McGovern said it is nothing new, or different, as far as USPS operations are concerned.

“When I was transferred from Queens, I wasn’t happy about it at first,” McGovern said, recalling how she was relocated to Manhattan in 1992. “I was like, ‘Oh no, I’m going to have to pay for the train.’ But it’s not so bad now.”

The consolidation is part of the USPS’s response to the changing ways people communicate, she said. Now it’s more through the Internet and via e-mail.
“The type of mail we process has changed,” she said. “We’re really just going along with the changes that the public is putting upon us.”

First class mail is being replaced more and more by what Zlatkin calls “magazines and such that most people call ‘junk mail.’”

“They call it a cost saving measure,” Zlatkin said. But rates will go up in 2007 for the general public – with stamps up 3 cents a piece – while subsidies will go to big corporate mailers facing fewer drop-off points. He said he wonders who is really “saving” in the relocation.

“A lot of people depend on that mail – older people, who can’t get out as much like to be able to order from catalogs and things, handicapped people, and people who just don’t have the time,” McGovern said in defense of junk mail.

Increasing technology used in mail processing also contributes to the consolidation, McGovern said. “No one sits and looks at each individual piece of mail, and the ‘read rate’ of the machines has improved significantly over the years, which leads to more facilities with excess time,” she explained. “Rather than having two locations with excess time, it makes more economic sense to combine operations.”

In any case, McGovern said, postal patrons will be given an opportunity to voice their concerns before anything is finalized.

Meanwhile, the Bronx Coalition to Save Our Post Office, made up of the New York Metro Area Postal Workers Union and other community organizations, is holding its own community forum on Saturday, Nov.18 at noon, in the Lincoln Hospital Auditorium, 234 E. 149th St.