Greater Fort Wayne Business Weekly
The U.S. Postal Service said Thursday it will close its remote encoding center in Fort Wayne in October.
According to a statement, the 139 union workers at the remote encoding center will be reassigned to available positions within the Postal Service. Twelve administrative employees will need to seek placement within the Postal Service, the agency said, and 264 part-time, temporary employees will receive counseling to help them find other jobs.
The Postal Service also said voluntary early retirement will offered to the 151 union and administrative employees who meet minimum age and service requirements.
At the remote encoding center, located at 2980 E. Coliseum Blvd., workers receive electronic images of handwritten mail from mail processing plants. The workers type address information into computers, and the information is transmitted back to the plants where bar codes corresponding to the addresses are printed on the envelopes. The envelopes then are processed via automated equipment.
In its statement, the Postal Service said closing the Fort Wayne remote encoding center, as well as two other centers in Charleston, W.Va., and Glendale, Ariz., is part of a consolidation effort that began in 1999. Since then, 50 facilities have been closed.
"The remote encoding centers were designed as a temporary solution to automate and expedite the processing of handwritten and poorly printed addresses," Ron Woodall, manager of in-plant support for the Postal Service's Great Lakes Area, said in the statement. "The plan from the start was to phase out the REC operation as technology enhancements enabled us to automate more mail."
Improvements in optical character-recognition technology have reduced the number of images processed at remote encoding centers. Once the Fort Wayne and two other centers are closed, only two will remain: in Wichita, Kan., and Salt Lake City.