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Chattanooga: 400 out of work after cutbacks by Postal Service, turbine maker

By: Brian Lazenby
(Contact)

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Beth Barnett

Cutbacks at two Chattanooga facilities will eliminate more than 400 local jobs, officials said Thursday.

The U.S. Postal Service’s remote encoding center in Chattanooga will close in April, eliminating 391 jobs, and Aerisyn LLC, a Chattanooga company that makes towers for wind turbines, announced that officials will lay off 54 employees there.

An official with the Postal Service said the Chattanooga remote encoding center at 911 Eastgate Loop was scheduled for eventual shutdown from the time it was established 14 years ago.

“The remote encoding centers were designed as a temporary solution to automate and expedite the processing of handwritten and poorly printed addresses,” said Carolyn Chambers, district manager for the U.S. Postal Service in Tennessee. “The plan from the start was to downsize the REC operation as technology enhancements enabled us to automate more mail.”

Beth Barnett, a spokeswoman for the Postal Service, said improvements in technology eliminated the need for the 551-employee facility that processes and applies bar codes to millions of pieces of mail each day.

“Now, technology is such that we have equipment that can automatically read and apply bar code without taking that other step,” she said. “We knew as technology improved there would no longer be the need for this operation.”

Officials said 160 of the postal workers are career employees and will have the opportunity to be phased into other postal jobs. The remaining 391 “transitional” employees will be forced out of their jobs.

Ms. Barnett said those let go will receive outplacement counseling to help them find new jobs.

Brandon Wilson, 23, has worked at the remote encoding center for two years. He said he is not sure what he will do when the facility shuts down.

“They are not giving us any details right now,” he said. “I don’t know what I’m going to do. I have a job through April, but that’s it. Right now they are working us overtime, so that’s better than nothing.”

Aerisyn officials said the job cuts at the 1025 W. 19th St. facility are a result of the current economic climate and customer order “pull backs.” Company officials declined to answer questions about the layoffs and referred inquiries to a company statement.

In the statement, Chief Executive Mike Hohl said he hopes the cuts are temporary.

“External factors in the global economy beyond the control of the company are impacting the orders for wind towers manufactured at our facility,” he said in the release.

According to information from Aerisyn, the company has more than 140 employees and leases space from Alstom Corp.

J.Ed Marston, spokesman for the Chattanooga Area Chamber of Commerce, said he is unsure what the job losses might mean for the local economy.

“We obviously always hate to hear about job losses in our community, and this comes at a very difficult time for the economy,” he said.

Mr. Marston said he hopes positive changes in the local economy, such as the coming Volkswagen plant and an expansion at Alstom Corp., will enable the workers to find new jobs.

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