The United States Postal Service is delaying plans to close the sorting center in downtown Youngstown until next year.

According to a statement from USPS spokesperson Karen Mazurkiewicz, the Postal Service will defer most of the plant consolidations that were scheduled to take place this summer as the final stage of what the service is calling a Network Rationalization Initiative.

Mazurkiewicz says that efforts to consolidate postal activities will resume in 2016.

It has been three years since the United States Postal Service first brought up the idea of downsizing operations across the nation to cut spending.

The process began in 2012. Consolidating operations for up to 82 facilities to save $750 million annually will resume in early January 2015 and be completed by the fall.

As part of that plan, the post office had planned to close the sorting center in downtown Youngstown by the end of this week.

Youngstown Area Postal Workers Union local 443 has said that the closing of the Youngstown facility would impact 120 employees. 

Some of those employees could apply for transfer to other USPS jobs within fifty miles of Youngstown if they are available.

Workers not eligible for transfer would be placed on "stay time", meaning they would stay home and still receive pay.

Mazurkiewicz says that when the mail processing consolidation initiative resumes, USPS intends to ensure employees are provided productive employment and not stay time.

In 2012 and 2013, the Postal Service says it consolidated 141 mail processing facilities, saving $856 million annually. The post office says the impact on service was negligible and required no layoffs.

The Postal Service says that over the past three years, it has recorded financial losses of $26 billion.

The post office says it faces a decline of first-class mail volume and revenue, wage and benefit inflation, increasing operating costs, as well as legislative mandates.

The list of facilities to be consolidated is available by following this link.