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Post office locations in the Tri-parish region avoided the cost cutting axe Thursday when it was announced that 35,000 jobs would be eliminated nationwide and 223 mail processing plants would be consolidated or closed in an effort to save $20 billion during the next three years.
In Louisiana, U.S. Postal Service processing centers in New Orleans and Lafayette are expected to see changes. A proposed plan directs both incoming and outgoing mail now processed in New Orleans to be shifted to Baton Rouge. The center in Lafayette would have outgoing mail shifted to Baton Rouge while still handling incoming mail. The Postal Service was not clear as to how many jobs might be impacted by this move. Critics contend taking mail processing away from New Orleans is a mistake since that city has the only major airport in a multi-state region.
In May 2011 the post office in Houma had processing for rural routes of Terrebonne Parish shifted to New Orleans, but continued to deliver to Gray and Bourg as well as Houma itself. Service for Schriever was shifted to Thibodaux in Lafourche Parish from the Terrebonne Parish seat Post Office.
“We have about 100 employees and were not affected with any of the [new] cuts,” Houma Postmaster Nelson Dupree said.
“We’re going through a survey, but we are fine,” Morgan City Postmaster Michelle Redman. The main post office in Morgan City has 51 employees that cover both municipal and rural routes.
Concern had been raised regarding the future of Morgan City’s 80-year-old facility after it was placed on a watch list due to a declining workload. It is a process that Redman is not letting bother her.
Consolidation of services from New Orleans, where some Terrebonne Parish processing went nine months ago, to Baton Rouge could impact as many as 800 employees in the Crescent City, while 200 postal jobs in Lafayette stand to be canceled by the change.
“Thibodaux and Houma are large enough offices [for the areas they serve] that they are not going to be consolidated,” Dupree said.
No one at the main post office in Thibodaux was available to comment on mail processing and delivery conditions.
The USPS has been threatened with insolvency due to losses of $23 million a day. Congress will have the final say in what happens to mail processing locations on the ledger, meaning that the Post Office cannot act on announced closures, cuts and consolidations until after May 15.
Post office clerk Linda Jones, left, assists customer Anne Barrios as business continues as usual at the U.S. Postal Service office in Houma.
