First thought
Back in 2010 Wausau post office was slated to close. In 2011 or 2012 there was a town hall meeting telling residents of Wausau that mail delivery standards wont be affected. This proved not to be true, but Wausau postal facility stayed open but cancellations and some letter sorting was sent to Green Bay postal facility along with flats (magazines and large envelopes with parcels going to Oshkosh or Milwaukee Plants. Back in 2010 to 2012 Wausau employee were a proud bunch of hard workers that excelled at getting all mail out in a timely manner, but when one sends mail away to be processed elsewhere delays will happen.
Now 2021 we have again decided that Wausau will now reduce its staff yet again and all letters for 544 area will be processed completely in Green Bay. Green Bay has been fully processing 545 letters for some time now. Reality is that Green Bap processing plant has removed 2 letter sorting machines from the plant. They have added stackers or more bins to existing machines to combine multiple runs, but this is causing additional problems for maintenance and stress on the employees running the bigger machines. If Wausau is losing a certain amount of employees to run the machines and these were full time employees then easy math would indicate that Green Bay should add more full time jobs at the plant to the tune of every lost employee from Wausau should be a full time employee added. Part time employees or (postal support employees) as the USPS refers to can be required to work 7 twelve hours days 360 days a year. This burnout rate has severely hampered the USPS ability to retain a vast amount of new temporary workers, thus putting a strain on the already burnt out workers who made it through the pandemic and show up to work on a daily basis.
This short sightedness by the USPS will lead to employee shortage problems in the future which in turn may lead to longer delays for the Wausau mail. Now the USPS employees will try their best to ensure no mail gets left behind in Green Bay but needs help management above to ensure this happens. Only time will truly tell how having all Wausau mail processed in Green Bay will affect the service that Postmaster General Louis DeJoy says won’t be delayed with the closing of the Wausau Post Office.
First Name: Kelly
Last Name: Heaney
Email: kellyheaney2016@gmail.com
Union/Local: APWU – NEWAL Local 2247
Office held if any: President in Green Bay, former President of APWU Wausau Local
Second thought
Over the last 10 years or so that I’ve served as President for the Wausau Area Local 4532 I have witnessed and tried to fight back against the Postal Services ill advised decisions on trying to consolidate operations. Years ago they removed our cancellation operations followed by removing our 545 Northern WI letter volume and sending the work to the Green Bay Plant. Our Plant was always one of the top producers for mid sized plants in the US. Our workers have always been hard working and proud people. So we got rewarded by taking our work. Nice slap in the face. I tried to show the Postal Service Leaders that came to Wausau how their numbers were totally off and it would actually save money by leaving the operations in Wausau. They wouldn’t even look at and agreed with me but said it wasn’t about money. We were told it was all about money saving all along.
Now here we are again. Now they want to remove our 544 Central WI letter volume. It will cost them a large amount to remove 5 more DBCS’s and send elsewhere or scrap and then are left with displaced full timer clerks and high level Maintenance employees with nothing to fix. So they’ll have to find homes for them to work and will release all PSE employees who are non career. So when they say no one will lose their jobs they are not being truthful.
The Rothschild Plant is also owned by the Postal Service which isn’t the case in many places. So now you’ll have a Plant sitting there just used as a possible hub facility. What a waste of a wonderful facility and hard working people. I have reached out to Politicians and media to try to stop this horrible plan but it seems they are going to move forward with it anyway further delaying our customers mail.
First Name: Michael
Last Name: Tomczyk
Email: tzack89@icloud.com
Union/Local: APWU – Wausau Area Local 4532
Office held if any: President