USPS to cut around 1400 jobs in 3 states

April 2, 2009 – 7:48 pm – No Comment

If you’re a postal worker in Charleston, West Virginia, Glendale, Arizona or Fort Wayne, Indiana you may want to have a second job lined up, but the cuts won’t be happening too soon.

The USPS announced that it will be cutting 1,490 jobs in those three states. The closures are focused on cuts to operations that began in 1999 that were meant to be temporary to begin with. At the time, the postal service opened 55 facilities to sort through hand-addressed mail, which at the time couldn’t be read by the optical scanners. Today the scanners can read 95% of hand addressed mail, as opposed to 2% in 1999.

The Charleston and Fort Wayne centers will close in October and the Arizona one will close in 2010.

While it is difficult for anyone to lose their job, these facilities were meant to only be temporary and 10 years is a long time for a temporary operation, especially when the optical scanners are working at 95% now.