Citizens concerned about mail services leaving Corpus Christi amid postal facility upgrade

The U.S. Postal Service announced a decision on April 9 to modernize the Corpus Christi Processing and Distribution Center (P&DC) as part of a $40 billion investment strategy to upgrade and improve postal processing, transportation and delivery networks across the country.

Under the plan, Corpus Christi's main post office at 809 Nueces Bay Blvd., which opened on Dec. 29, 1969, and was renamed the Dr. Hector Perez Garcia Post Office Building on Sept. 14, 1988, will become a Local Processing Center (LPC).

Letters, flats, express and business mail will continue to be processed there, while outgoing mail will be sent to the P&DC in San Antonio. The two facilities are 149 miles apart.

The Postal Service began conducting a Mail Processing Facility Review (MPFR) on Jan. 10 to assess how the Corpus Christi P&D currently operates, gathering comments from attendees at a public hearing held on Feb. 15. The $5.4 million in changes to the facility are part of its 10-year strategic plan, Delivering for America, designed to streamline mail services and achieve financial stability.

The Postal Service had a net loss of $9.2 billion in fiscal year 2020, according to comments made in the plan by U.S. Postal Service Postmaster General and CEO Louis DeJoy.

It has faced sharp decreases in volume and demand for traditional letter and flat products delivered to customers’ mailboxes, higher delivery costs, and facilities and infrastructure that don’t meet the needs of today’s customers.

Sending Mail to San Antonio, Delivering it in Corpus Christi

The processing center in Corpus Christi is among more than 250 P&DCs where the Postal Service plans to streamline mail flow by merging letters and flat products into shape-based mail flows to handle increased package demand.

The Postal Service also plans to consolidate surface transportation at 21 Network Distribution Centers (NDC) nationwide by transitioning them into Regional Distribution Centers (RDCs) focused on regional package processing. Access will also be extended at P&DCs and NDCs to grow 1- to 2-day ground package delivery and 2- to 5-day package services to compete with e-commerce options.

An additional 15 to 20 package processing P&DCs will be turned into RDCs that, according to a Postal Service press release, could offer express services and acceptance of bulk and permit mail.

Plan details, along with the facility review, were presented at the public hearing by U.S. Postal Service Executive Plant Manager Kim Calderon. Fifty-four people attended, including five customers and 49 employees, as well as union representatives of postal workers, to find out how the decision to consolidate outgoing mail would impact mail delivery and staffing at the Corpus Christi facility.

A total of $3 million to 3.9 million in annual savings is expected from the project, including $120,000 to $160,000 in mail processing craft workhours, $180,000 to $240,000 in management workhour savings, and $2.1 million to $2.8 million in transportation, according to the MPFR.

The company’s investments in the LPC would implement $4.4 million for modernization efforts and deferred maintenance to provide new lighting, renovated bathrooms and breakrooms in the office, with $1 million of those investments paying for a new onsite Single Induction Package Sorter to improve delivery services.

The service is expanding its self-service tools for customers to ship their own packages through Smart Lockers and USPS Connect Local to provide drop off points for same or next-day delivery and USPS Regional and National for high-volume shipments.

Union and postal workers worry about postal machines taking jobs away from clerks, custodians, mechanics and workers.

Concern About Laid-off Workers

The MPFR stated that no career layoffs will be made. According to a chart presented on career and staffing impacts, nine craft staffing jobs, including two in mail processing and seven in maintenance, as well as two managerial maintenance positions, will be lost, with 13 of 15 current positions in mail processing moving from Corpus Christi to San Antonio. The decision could also impact some full-time positions and post office employees.

Juan Munoz, president of the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC), Branch 1259, said the union representatives made it known at the public hearing that Corpus Christi mail packages have been going to San Antonio since October of 2023 and that there has been a noticeable delay in mail delivery since then.

“The Postal Service did their study after they moved operations to San Antonio,” he said. “It makes no sense that they would send the mail to San Antonio to sit for two or three days when it could be delivered here overnight.”

The Postal Service's decision to make the Corpus Christi office a processing center is the next step in consolidating each of the stations in neighboring towns, among which are Alice, Ingleside and Robstown, into single facilities out of which carriers would deliver mail, Munoz said.

He said that the Postal Service wouldn’t answer questions or provide comments about how much money would be saved through the plan during the town hall.

In San Antonio, one union leader expressed concern about the influx of mail and lack of available space at the city’s aging facility at 10410 Perrin Beitel Road.

Alex Aleman, president of the American Postal Workers Union (APWU), San Antonio Alamo Area Local No. 195, said the medium-sized facility is crowded, and that postal workers have been awaiting a new regional processing center that will provide more space for equipment and new employees but that has yet to be built.

The Postal Service held a public hearing in McAllen recently, another city whose main facility could also be consolidated in San Antonio, where people also went and voiced their concerns. Their questions weren’t answered, however, Aleman said.

He said that people also asked why the hearing was held at 3:30 in the afternoon on a weekday in Flour Bluff and not in a centralized location such as downtown.

As NALC and APWU continue to support American postal workers who work at the plant, the Postal Service stressed that all career bargaining unit reassignments, as well as any reduction in any number of pre-career employees, would be made in accordance with respective collective bargaining agreements, with enhanced package processing and shipping capacity as part of its strategy that could result in increased plant activity and the need for additional support in the future.

Munoz said he looks forward to legislation being passed that will protect overnight delivery and reinstate standards to protect workers by preventing the Postal Service from weakening those standards.

While he worries about the future, he said it helps to make sure the voices of the workers are heard.

This article originally appeared on Corpus Christi Caller Times: Corpus Christi U.S. Post Office Processing Center to be modernized