The U.S. Postal Service has completed its study on shifting some operations from Hickory's Processing and Distribution plant to its Greensboro location 81 miles away.
The study suggests consolidating some of the plants' operations would save a lot of money.
"We stand to save about $1.6 million annually by processing mail in Greensboro," said USPS spokeswoman Enola Rice.
"We have machines that are standing idle in Hickory because the mail volume is not there," she said. "There's just not enough mail to keep the machines moving."
USPS employee Doug Woodward and his fellow employees at the Hickory facility have been vocal in their opposition to the proposed change and have engaged 20 local governments to help them fight the consolidation.
They believe that, although the proposed consolidation would only shift 32 jobs to the Greensboro plant, the move would be a first step toward closing the Hickory facility altogether, Woodward said.
He also believes consolidation would erode customer service.
Rice disagrees.
"We are very confident that service is not going to suffer," she said.
"The employees in Hickory do a wonderful job," she said, adding that the Greensboro facility has been the No. 1 processing plant in the nation for the past several years.
The decision to consolidate some of the operations from the two facilities was not based on service. It was based on saving money.
The postal service is losing mail volume every day. Some of that is due to the rise in e-mail and other types of electronic communication.
The recession also has caused some of the largest corporate users of the postal service to cut costs and mail fewer pieces of promotional material, Rice said. The problem is nationwide.
"We're down 7 billion pieces of mail so far this year," she said. "We stand to lose $7 billion this year.
"We have undertaken a number of cost-saving measures," Rice said.
Those methods have included early retirements, higher postage rates and consolidating facilities.
Another way to save money is to make sure the mail sorting machines are kept running at full capacity.
Transferring mail from the Hickory Processing and Distribution facility to the Greensboro plant to be sorted would keep the machines running in Greensboro and eliminate the need to man idle machines in Hickory.
Rice said the consolidation would not cost any USPS employees their jobs.
"We've been doing Area Mail Processing studies for decades," Rice said. "In all that time, not a single employee has been laid off and that will not change."
Employees are given the option of accepting transfers to other facilities or not, she said.
The next step in the process of consolidating operations to Greensboro will be a public forum on the issue, where the USPS will make its case for consolidation and the public will be allowed to respond.
The meeting is scheduled for Nov. 19 at 6 p.m. at the Hickory Arts and Science Center at 243 N. Third St., NE.
"It is not a done deal," Rice said. "We won't do it if service will be impacted."
She said postal officials will be looking for facts rather than impassioned emotional responses to the planned consolidation.
"We will keep accepting opinions for 15 days after the presentation," she said.
The change will not affect Hickory's downtown post office or Hickory's mail carriers.
"There is no plan to close the Hickory Post Office," she said.
The USPS' position is laid out at usps.com/all/amp.htm under Hickory.
The American Postal Workers Union position is laid out at www.conovernc.gov under "Local Postal Service Operations Could Be Cut!"
Comments can be mailed to Consumer Affairs Manager, Greensboro District, P.O. Box 24799, Greensboro, N.C. 27498-9631
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