Postal Workers’ Center Delivers

SANTA CLARITA —  Postal officials Tuesday opened a center they said is designed to provide 10,000 local postal workers with the tools for professional and personal advancement.

Stocked with five new Internet-ready computers and a trove of reference materials ranging from encyclopedias and self-help books to instructional videos and trade magazines, the Life Work Planning Center opened at the Santa Clarita Postal Processing Center.

The first of its kind in this area, the center is modeled after similar facilities around the country, postal officials said.

The $40,000 center will serve 3,000 employees at the Santa Clarita facility and thousands of other postal workers from the San Fernando and Antelope valleys.

Because so many postal employees work nights and Saturdays, the resource center will be open 24 hours per day, six days a week, said Tyrone Washington, who played a leading role in developing the center.

“I think it’s important for the employees to have a place where they can come and relax and learn some new skills and try to get ahead,” Washington said. “Not just to make their work life better, but their personal life also.”

In addition to an array of computer programs and instructional materials that could help employees advance their careers within the Postal Service or beyond, the center also includes information on subjects from hobbies to health care.

Postal Service spokeswoman Terri Bouffiou said the center was not a direct response to the string of violent workplace incidents involving postal workers in recent years. But Bouffiou said the resource center does reflect a desire by postal officials to address employee satisfaction.

“We are aware that there are problems in our work environment and they don’t go away by wishing them away,” Bouffiou said. “The resource center is a way of allowing people to meet their needs, whatever those needs happen to be.”

For operations manager Tony Martino, who wasted little time logging on to one of the new computers, that can be simply a quiet place to read.

“With all the workers and all the machines, it can be tough to find a quiet place to relax,” Martino said. “This is a good idea. I think it’s going to be very popular.”