On this West Virginia Morning, the United States Postal Service (USPS) announced last week it would postpone delivery network changes that would downsize the Charleston Processing and Distribution Center. But this news hasn’t remedied months-long tensions between local workers and USPS officials. As Jack Walker reports, union representatives are now filing grievance claims for some workers.
On this West Virginia Morning, the United States Postal Service (USPS) announced last week it would postpone delivery network changes that would downsize the Charleston Processing and Distribution Center. But this news hasn’t remedied months-long tensions between local workers and USPS officials. As Jack Walker reports, union representatives are now filing grievance claims for some workers.
Also, in this show, throughout the year, Kentucky sees a transient workforce that calls the Commonwealth home. The seasonal migrant workers participate in a variety of jobs. Stu Johnson of WEKU looks at some of the picture in Fayette County.
West Virginia Morning is a production of West Virginia Public Broadcasting which is solely responsible for its content.
Support for our news bureaus comes from Shepherd University.
Chris Schulz produced this episode.
Listen to West Virginia Morning weekdays at 7:43 a.m. on WVPB Radio or subscribe to the podcast and never miss an episode. #WVMorning
A postal workers’ union in Kanawha County has entered grievance procedure over the removal of four workers from a Charleston mail processing facility’s schedule.
Four workers at the Charleston Processing and Distribution Center ushered in the new month with unexpected letters from their employers.
Sent by facility management May 1, these letters said that the workers would be removed from the work schedule in a matter of days “due to the needs of this facility.”
In subsequent correspondence with workers, management said they were required to reduce the number of temporary workers at the facility by regional officials with the United States Postal Service (USPS), which oversees the Charleston center.
In response, representatives with Charleston’s American Postal Workers Union Local 133 are pursuing grievance claims on behalf of the four workers, as months-long tensions between USPS and local workers continue to flare.
Union concerns
Tim Holstein, union vice president, alleged that the move from management constituted “pretextual” termination — providing a false reason for removing workers to conceal a reason that violates their contracts.
Holstein said this is especially evident in the fact that current employees are struggling to keep up with demands on the facility.
“How can you say you’re letting these employees go due to lack of work — or you don’t need them on the schedule — when you have all this mail that we’re failing on?” he asked.
All four workers are temporary employees with USPS, which means they have fewer protections than full-time, career employees. They can be dismissed for a lack of work, but dismissal would violate their contracts if it was done for “pretextual” reasons.
In the grievance proceedings, Holstein said union representatives are making the case that the dismissal of temporary staff was spurred by the broader effort to reduce mailing operations in West Virginia.
Ongoing tensions
In late 2023, USPS officials announced they would reduce operations and staff at the Charleston facility, which currently serves as West Virginia’s only full USPS mail processing center and handles a significant amount of the state’s shipping and delivery services.
The facility downgrading — part of a ten-year plan to streamline USPS operations nationally — would move certain mail processing services to facilities in the Pittsburgh area, and possibly require some West Virginia staff to relocate.
Earlier this month, USPS Postmaster General Louis DeJoy announced he would pause delivery network changes until at least 2025 as concern over the USPS plan gained traction nationwide.
Members of the Charleston-based American Postal Workers Union 133 hosted informational pickets in 2023 over proposed changes to a local mail processing facility.
Photo Credit: American Postal Workers Union 133
DeJoy’s decision seemingly marked good news for workers, delaying any downsizing planned for the Charleston facility.
But Holstein said the temporary nature of the decision, paired with the reduction in work opportunities at the mail processing center, has only stirred up more concern on the ground.
Holstein alleged that management has kept the temporary workers on staff without providing hours or pay so that they are more likely to quit, and USPS will not have to provide them severance benefits.
“They’re basically putting these employees off the schedule in efforts and hopes that what they’re gonna say is, ‘Screw it, I quit,’ so they’re not responsible,” he said. “Then now they’re off the hook … as far as any low earnings or unemployment benefits.”
In a written statement to West Virginia Public Broadcasting, USPS Spokesperson Naddia Dhalai did not respond to these claims directly. But she said that “operational flexibility” is a key part of the temporary worker position for USPS.
“Like all employers who have a flexible employee category, there is a higher turnover rate with these employees, providing us the opportunity to both capture savings by rightsizing our workforce when making long overdue operational changes and avoiding any career layoffs,” she wrote.
Grievance proceedings
Union workers are bound to a step-by-step grievance procedure established in the union’s collective bargaining agreement.
The first step in these proceedings requires an individual worker to meet with their direct supervisor. Holstein said the union has already completed this step of the process, to no avail.
Local union representatives must then meet with USPS officials. If a decision is not reached, national union representatives must meet with a regional USPS official and come to a resolution, or enter a binding arbitration process.
Holstein said the union’s goal is to get the workers their prior shifts back and secure them compensation for the four hours of work they are guaranteed to receive each day through their contracts. Since receiving the letters, the workers have not received this pay, he said.
But Holstein said the grievance process can be arduous, with barriers to communicating with USPS that can be taxing on staff members undertaking its steps.
“The only thing that’s really becoming difficult for us to fight is the complacency of upper-level management to [not] provide the information that shows they’re wrong,” he said.
Still, Holstein said the union plans to push on with its claims.
“It’s an uphill battle that we fought for a long time,” he said. “It’s nothing unusual to us.”
The United States Postal Service announced Monday it would pause its implementation of further mail network changes until January 2025, which could impact a mail processing facility in West Virginia.
The United States Postal Service (USPS) is postponing mail delivery network changes nationwide, which could affect the proposed downsizing of its only full mail processing facility in West Virginia.
Last month, USPS announced it would follow through on plans to move certain mailing operations to facilities in the Pittsburgh area. This followed months of union protests, alongside concerns from residents and lawmakers that the move could increase mail delivery times or negatively affect postal workers.
The Charleston Processing and Distribution Center’s potential downsizing is part of a ten-year plan to restructure USPS operations nationally that has drawn increasing scrutiny from elected officials.
Earlier this month, 26 United States senators — including Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., and Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va. — penned a letter to Postmaster General Louis DeJoy expressing concern over the “irrevocable changes” underway through the national plan.
“I’m concerned about job loss, and also about delivery and what the accuracy and timeliness will be with all the mail being processed in Pennsylvania,” Capito said during a virtual press briefing last Thursday. “And the loss of jobs. Whether people can move, we want to keep them in West Virginia.”
As many as 90 postal workers in West Virginia would be affected by the proposed changes, through a combination of facility transfers and layoffs.
“It is essential we understand the full impact of these proposed changes, especially on our hardworking postal employees, before moving forward on their implementation,” Manchin said in a Tuesday press release.
Previously, DeJoy said the national plan was “correcting for decades of haphazard decision making and neglect to our physical infrastructure network.”
But USPS announced it was changing course Monday. DeJoy said further facility downsizing plans would not be implemented until January 2025, and promised to notify Congress of any further consolidation plans, and to slow the pace of implementation of facility changes nationwide.
Still, Tim Holstein, vice president of the Charleston-area American Postal Workers Union Local 133, said workers have not received clear communication on the future of their facility.
Holstein said that he and union workers worry that if USPS only pauses “further” consolidation plans, those that have already been approved — like the plans for the Charleston facility — could still be implemented.
“There is uncertainty whether the changes will be implemented,” he said. “Look at that word ‘further.’ Does that mean the ones planned, or does that mean the ones that are already in progress?”
Holstein said the South Charleston workers are awaiting further communications from USPS to verify how USPS’s decision will impact their facility. Susan Wright, USPS spokesperson for West Virginia, did not respond to email requests for comment on this story.
Jobs & Hope, a West Virginia program that provides job training to residents with substance use disorders, celebrated its 500th graduates during a ceremony in Charleston Wednesday.
Community members filed into a graduation ceremony unlike any other Wednesday.
It was held in the office of Gov. Jim Justice, celebrating the graduations of Sierra Mullins and Shane McCoy — the 500th graduates of West Virginia’s Jobs & Hope program.
The program provides residents who have substance use disorders access to job training and educational resources, with the goal of helping them secure long-term employment.
Founded in 2019, the program now has 1,619 active participants across the state, and has graduated more than 508 individuals, with even more completing their programs after Mullins and McCoy.
During the ceremony, both graduates had the opportunity to share speeches, expressing gratitude for the program and pride in what they have accomplished.
Originally from Boone County, Mullins said the program provided her much-needed support during a difficult recovery process.
“The road wasn’t always easy. Monthly screenings, basic classes and maintaining sobriety,” she said. “But each hurdle was a small price to pay for the invaluable support and resources provided by the program.”
McCoy said he began his recovery journey in 2019, and soon accessed educational resources through Jobs & Hope that taught him how to operate heavy machinery.
Now, he said he has had steady employment on a construction crew since November.
“The crew that I work with, and the gentlemen that I have met at this place, it has definitely helped my growth in the field,” McCoy said.
After the graduate’s speeches, Justice expressed his gratitude for the program’s success, and his support for participants statewide.
“Lo and behold, we’ve got 508 people, that their lives have changed in every way,” he said. “God bless each and every one of you for the guts that it takes to really get this done.”
For more information on the Jobs & Hope program, visit the program’s website.
A book from an academic researcher covering rural Appalachia shows how marginalized rural communities can create change by forming grassroots coalitions.
A book from an academic researcher covering rural Appalachia shows how marginalized rural communities can create change by forming grassroots coalitions.
In her soon to be published book, “Hauled Away, How Rural Appalachians Leverage Place in the Face of Extraction,” WVU assistant professor of English Erin Brock Carlson balances the history of extractive industries like coal with combating a rural town’s cultural, economic and intellectual extraction.
“The mission of all of this is really that rural communities, especially in Appalachia, are painted in very one dimensional, oftentimes stereotypical life,” Carlson said. “I’m really committed to honoring the expertise of people that live in rural places, because they oftentimes aren’t viewed as experts of their own experience. This project is all about casting those people as experts in demonstrating that rural communities are capable of solving their own problems.”
In her book, Carlson showcases hometown problem solvers. For example, in a former coal hub, organizers involved the cash poor and houseless in economic development. In a town that suspected a local arms manufacturer had polluted its air and water, an environmental activist engaged residents of a Black neighborhood close to the manufacturing facility, as well as elderly white residents who valued the manufacturer’s importance to the local economy.
And in a rural area with little access to broadband, an organizer tried to build an internet network owned by the community, with support from youth.
“The project really shows how going into a space thinking you have one project and really listening to community members to see what are the most pressing needs, and then adapting based on that, is a way to sort of address these other issues, but in a way that meets community needs directly,” she said.
Carlson said successful coalitions must bring those most marginalized, the poor, elderly, young, disabled, people of color, migrant workers and more into the public conversation.
“They are the ones that are most directly impacted or most deeply impacted by these problems,” she said. “When they’re not represented, their needs aren’t heard.”
Carlson said the expertise community members possess is often overlooked in favor of technical insights from lawyers or engineers.
The “Hauled Away” manuscript is expected to be completed in 2025.
West Virginia nonprofit Advantage Valley received more than $4 million in federal and local funds to redevelop a manufacturing plant near the town of Poca in Putnam County.
Newly granted federal and local funds will allow an economic development nonprofit to redevelop a manufacturing plant in the Kanawha Valley.
Advantage Valley purchased the Putnam County building — previously known as the Vossloh Track Building and the Union Boiler Plant — in 2023. The nonprofit works with local governments to develop jobs and economic growth in nine southwestern counties.
The project moved one step forward Tuesday when Advantage Valley was awarded a $3.4 million grant from the United States Economic Development Administration (EDA). These funds were also matched by $857,750 in local funds.
With the funds, Advantage Valley will renovate and repurpose the building, located near the town of Poca. The project is funded through disaster relief funds administered by the EDA to areas affected by natural disasters like flooding or wildfires in 2021 and 2022.
The project as a whole aims to create new jobs and investment opportunities in the region, according to a Tuesday EDA press release.
Federal officials also expressed their hopes for the renovation project in the press release.
“This EDA investment will support infrastructure improvements at the former Vossloh Track Building that will grow economic opportunity, support job growth and spur private investment in Charleston,” said U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo.
Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., and Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., echoed Raimondo’s support for the project.
Capito said that she would “look forward to the positive impact it will have on the Charleston area for years to come.”
“The EDA continues to be a strong partner for bolstering West Virginia’s economy and this announcement is proof of that,” Manchin said. “Renovating the former Vossloh Track Building will create good-paying jobs and spur economic opportunity throughout the entire Metro Valley.”
