The General Services Administration has decided to close all but two Federal Supply Service warehouses effective April 2001, according to a union official close to negotiations over the fate of 2,000 GSA jobs.
GSA's distribution center in Burlington, N.J., and a warehouse in Stockton, Calif., will remain open for an undisclosed period while the remaining six warehouses will be shut down by April of next year. The details of the warehouse shutdown have not yet been released, including how many jobs will be affected.
A GSA spokesperson said only that agency adminstrator David Barram "continues to have discussions with the union and is expected to announce a decision within the next few days."
GSA and the American Federation of Government Employees have been discussing the fate of the warehouses since October, when the agency reversed its initial decision to close all of the warehouses. GSA agreed to negotiate with AFGE after the union withdrew a grievance filed on behalf of the some 2,000 warehouse employees whose jobs would be affected by a shutdown.
In February, consultants from the Logistics Management Institute of McLean, Va., completed a study that offered several options for the warehouses' future.
A GSA decision to close six of the warehouses would be consistent with the second option outlined in the consultant's study, closing one or more of the warehouses while streamlining program operations.
Still, AFGE officials are not happy. "There's no business case for closing everything so soon," a union official said. "It appears to me that this is not an effort to save the core of the warehouses. They simply don't want to do that."
Once an official announcement is made, AFGE and GSA will begin what is likely to be a lengthy process of bargaining over the details of the decision. "Anyone can speculate what the situation is going to be in April 2001," the union official said.