With a local mail processing plant and hundreds of jobs in her district at stake, Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-3rd District, Wednesday condemned the U.S. Postal Service’s plan to end Saturday delivery.
“Today’s announcement is bad news both for the postal service’s employees and people across the country,” DeLauro said. “I have deep concerns that cutting Saturday delivery will lead to layoffs and facility closings at a time when our economy can least afford it.
“The Wallingford processing facility in particular is a real concern,” she continued, “and I will work with my colleagues in Connecticut’s congressional delegation to do everything in our power to keep it open.”
A processing center in Stamford is also on the chopping block.
Under the postal service’s plans, some of the work that takes place in the Wallingford and Stamford plants would be shifted to a facility in Hartford.
The USPS is curtailing service and wants to shut processing plants and little-used post offices to try to stop the hemorrhaging of money that has put it in the red.
Last year, former Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., marshaled a bill through the Senate that would give the USPS some breathing room and postpone the shuttering of processing centers and post offices. But the House of Representatives did not act.
DeLauro said, “Republicans in the House of Representatives were too busy posturing to take it up.”
“We must stop lurching from crisis to crisis,” DeLauro said. “It is time for Congress to act and put the postal service on the path to financial solvency.”