PLEASE NOTE: THAT THE FIGURES BELOW PROVIDED BY THE U.S. POSTAL SERVICE ONLY REFLECT ABOUT 50% OF TOTAL MAIL VOLUME.

THIS STATION DID NOT COMMENCE FULL SERVICE OPERATIONS UNTIL JUNE 1979.

House Post Office Handles

8.4 Million Letters Every Month

At 2:30 in the morning, the Longworth mailroom awakens. House Post Office employees arrive to begin a new day. U.S. Postal Service mailtrucks begin to unload. Nineteen and a half hours later the mailroom will once again be silent. During that time, well over 285,000 pieces of mail will be handled by the House Post Office employees. The process involved is surprisingly complex.

The mail is unloaded and taken to be x-rayed. All mail is scanned to insure there are no explosive or other dangerous devices. The mail, in trays, is then taken to the primary sorting

area.

The "primary sorter" takes a stack of letters from the tray and sorts them into 10 cubicles. All the cubicles are broken down by building and floor. This eliminates the need to memorize the exact room location of every Member and committee.

The "case-man" then takes the letters from the cubicles to the case" area and sorts them by room number. The case-man knows only the room numbers of Members and committees on a particular floor in a particular building. Letters which were mis-pitched" are returned to the primary sorter or given to the supervisor. Once the mail is pitched into the correct cases, the process is repeated with other floors and buildings.

At 6:30 a.m., all the mail which has been pitched since 2:30 a.m. is bundled, put on mailcarts and delivered. This process is repeated at 9:00 a.m., 11:00 a.m., and at 2:00 p.m.

The three steps of x-ray, primary sort and case sort continue throughout the day until 9:30 p.m., when the last Postal Service mailtruck is dispatched from the House Post Office to the City Post Office.

This is a brief overview of how "outside" mail is handled and processed by the House Post Office. This simple process becomes complex because of the sheer volume of mail handled each day.

Constituent mail alone averages over 3 million pieces per month. Not included in this count is mail which comes from Government agencies, the Library of Congress, CRS, the Supreme Court, White House correspondence plus packages and "special delivery" mail. There is also "inside mail" such as "Dear Colleague" letters, letters from one office to another, Congressional Records, newspapers, committee notices, and

so on.

If all kinds of mail are included, the approximate total pieces of mail handled by the House Post Office comes to well over 8.4 million in any average month. "In a day and a half." House Postmaster Robert Rota noted, "the Speaker alone received over 52,000 letters."

Other interesting and noteworthy items include:

• The House Post Office mailroom employee sorts an average of 1,200 pieces of mail per hour as compared to his counterpart in the regular Postal Service who sorts an average of 800 pieces.

• Incoming constituent mail has increased from over 15 million pieces in 1970 to the approximate known volume of over 53 million in 1976. During this time, the number of employees actually processing the mail has decreased.

In 1970, the House Post Office made deliveries to 630
different stops; the number of stops by 1977 increased to
725.

• The House Post Office now delivers all "special delivery"
letters promptly to the Members' offices. (Prior to this,
the City Post Office delivered the "special delivery"
letters at 8:00 a.m. If the Member's office wasn't open,
then the the letter was held until the next day
next. . .)

or the . Since 1972, a special messenger service delivers mail directly to the Social Security Administration in Baltimore and the State Department. This saves at least 4 days in bypassing the Government Mails Section of the City Post Office.

. Since 1972, full counter service is available until 6:00 p.m. during the week and until 1:00 p.m. on Saturdays. Rota said many House staffs have indicated that the extended hours have helped them handle their workloads more efficiently.

These items are even more significant in comparison with the decrease in services provided by the regular Postal Service. How is the House Post Office able to provide these additional services? Rota explains that several management techniques have been applied. One was in adjusting the work schedules for all House Post Office employees to allow for 7 days-a-week service: they work 12 straight days before they have a weekend off.

Also, overlapping shifts were initiated by the present postmaster with the approval of the House Administration Committee.

"These and other dynamic ideas," a knowledgeable source stated to STAFF. "account for how the House Post Office has managed to do so much with so little."

The mailroom is in operation from 2:30 a.m. until 10:00 pm., 7 days a week with the exception of Christmas Day, New Year's Day, and Inaugural Day every fourth year.

When asked why it was necessary to have 7 days-a-week service, the postmaster replied "Because we don't have any place to store excess mail coming from the City Post Office." (Remember: in 1 day, over 285,000 constituent letters will be delivered to the House Post Office.) "We can't afford to get behind in the mail," Rota stated, "because then there is twice as much to handle the next day."

On the other hand, many staff people have been irritated because a particular letter has taken 3 to 4 days to be delivered from one Member's office to another. Usually, the reason for the delay is that "inside mail" is placed in the "outside mail"