The Postal Service has released a schedule showing when the phase-two mail processing plants will be consolidated next year. The spreadsheet shows the date on which each type of mail will be relocated from a closing facility to a gaining facility.  As the schedule shows, the process would begin in January 2015 and continue until October, with much of the activity taking place next summer.

You can see the list uploaded to Google docs here.  You can also download it directly from the USPS RIBBS website (or just click here).  Note that the first page has an explanation; the schedule itself appears on the second sheet (the tab is at the bottom).

As it explains in a letter to its business customers, “The United States Postal Service is planning to resume the rationalization of our network of mail processing facilities which began in 2012. To provide adequate time for planning and preparation, the Postal Service is providing this six-month advance notice of consolidations, for up to 82 facilities, which will begin early January 2015 and be completed by the fall mailing season.”

Senator Bernie Sanders is leading a push against these consolidations.  He and Senators Jon Tester of Montana and Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin have written a letter to the two top members of the Senate Appropriations Committee to request a one-year moratorium on consolidations.  The letter was signed by fifty senators, nearly all of them Democrats.  The six Republicans who signed were Roy Blunt (MO), John Hoeven (ND), John Thune (SD), Susan Collins (ME), James Inhofe (OK), Orrin Hatch (UT).