WASHINGTON — The U.S. Postal Service, which predicts an annual loss of $18.2 billion by 2015, plans to eliminate 5.4 percent of its workforce by closing almost half its mail-processing facilities to decrease costs.
The service plans to shut 223 of its 461 mail-processing plants by February 2013, Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe said Thursday. The closings will cut about 35,000 jobs, said David Partenheimer, a spokesman.
The service is shutting post offices and seeking congressional approval to end Saturday mail delivery as more people use the Internet to correspond and pay bills. Mail volume fell 6 percent in the quarter that ended Dec. 31 and might drop 14 percent by 2016, led by declines in first-class mail, the service said this month.
“We have capacity in our processing plants to process about double the letter mail we have in our system now,” Donahoe said.
The closings will save the service about $2.5 billion a year, Donahoe said. The service posted a $3.3 billion loss for the quarter ended Dec. 31. It had about 650,000 employees at the end of the year, the service said in a filing this month.
In Colorado, processing facilities in Colorado Springs, Alamosa, Durango and Salida have been targeted for closure, as have 63 of the state’s 390 post offices.
