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More Jobs Lost in South Jersey, Post Office Shutting Down Swedesboro Facility

Thursday, October 08, 2009

Earlier this week Sunoco announced it was closing down its Eagle Point Plant in Westville laying off 400 workers. Today the United States Postal Service released a statement announcing the closing of the Philadelphia Logistics & Distribution Center (L&DC), located in Swedesboro NJ. The facility employs 575 people.

The US Postal Service released this statement:

The Philadelphia Logistics & Distribution Center (L&DC), located in Swedesboro NJ, will close at the end of March, 2010, and the operations shifted into nearby postal processing facilities in the surrounding area. This facility is a "back room" operation that is transparent to our customers.

The Postal Service must look continually to improve productivity and increase efficiency while maintaining excellent service. This move leverages owned postal space helping us to accomplish our goal to reduce costs and protect the long-term viability of our organization. We will continue to review all aspects of our business in an effort to close the gap between costs and revenue.

This transfer of operations will result in significant savings for the Postal Service. We will be working to ensure that affected employees are afforded the opportunity to be reassigned to available vacant positions for which they are qualified. I understand that there are currently 575 employees at that facility, including management.

Given our financial challenges, cost reductions remain an integral part of our strategy to protect the long term viability of the organization. We will continue to review all aspects of our business in an effort to close the gap between costs and revenue. The increasingly turbulent economy has decreased mail volume substantially this past year, significantly affecting the Postal Service's revenue. As we know, this was led by weaknesses and failures in sectors that are historically among the largest generators of mail -- finance, credit, insurance, and housing. For FY 2008, these factors resulted in a mail volume loss of 9.5 billion pieces, or 4.5 percent. We have not experienced a decline of this magnitude in our history and the trend is continuing today. Our projections for this fiscal year (just completed) are no more encouraging. The original outlook for FY 2009 was an additional volume decline of 8 billion pieces; however, it now appears volume decline for this year will exceed 20 billion pieces.

To prepare for future anticipated declines in mail volume, the Postal Service has planned even more aggressive strategies to lower costs, reduce the size of its workforce and to adjust operations and resources accordingly. These strategies will have a direct impact on our employees, who may be required to perform different jobs, work different hours or work at different facilities. We are doing all we can to lessen the negative impact on employees, but it would be fiscally irresponsible not to take these actions. With prudent use of our operational flexibility and trust in our managers' ability to lead us through the current economic storm, we will continue to meet our goal of providing quality service at reasonable rates to over 149 million homes and businesses across America.

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