The financially struggling U.S. Postal Service said Thursday it might close Akron’s mail-processing facility that employs about 400 full-time workers.The Akron facility and the Canton center that employs more than 200 people are among nine scheduled to close in Ohio.The work being done in Akron on Wolf Ledges Parkway and Cleveland Avenue Northwest in Canton would be sent to a facility in Cleveland as part of the agency’s nationwide cost-cutting proposal.Akron’s mail-sorting operation is separate from those involving mail carriers and the post office at the Wolf Ledges complex.John Disko, 60, of Tallmadge, who works in the Akron mail-processing facility, said he and fellow employees “are just waiting to see what’s happening. It’s like everybody’s holding their breath.”He said older workers “feel sorry for the younger people” who can’t retire.The Postal Service said Thursday that it is considering closing roughly 250 of its 487 processing plants.Victor Dubina, Postal Service spokesman in Cleveland, said the agency could begin revealing in March which of the facilities will close.Other Ohio mail-processing facilities being reviewed for possible closing are in Youngstown, Toledo, Cincinnati, Steubenville, Dayton, Athens and Chillicothe.The only Ohio mail-processing plants not on the list are in Cleveland and Columbus, said Julie Truss, vice president of the Ohio Postal Workers Union.The Postal Service said that it also plans to change its “service standard” for delivery of first-class mail. The new standard would be delivery in two to three days. The service said this means that “on average, customers would no longer receive mail the day after it was mailed.”Mary Sitko, president of the Akron Metro Postal Union, said she thinks the Akron plant will stay open. “But I believe our function in the building could be something different.”“It’s all kind of vague right now,” Sitko said.She noted that in her job as a mail-processing clerk she works with a machine that sorts catalogs and magazines for the Canton and Mansfield areas. “Maybe we could take on another city.”Sitko said, “I don’t have specifics because they [postal service officials don’t have specifics.”Disko, the technician, said keeping the Akron facility makes sense. He noted it is in “a prime location, at the intersection of two freeways.”The review of mail-processing centers comes as the postal service is projecting a record $10 billion loss this fiscal year amid a drastic drop in the amount of first-class mail.The service has blamed the Internet, as well as the weak economy, for the drop in mail volume. Volume has dropped by more than 43 billion items over the last five years.“The decline has created substantial excess capacity within the postal processing network,” the postal service said. Closing all of the approximately 250 facilities on the nationwide list would save $3 billion a year and cut about 35,000 jobs, Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe said at a news conference in Washington, D.C.Some employees may have to change jobs if their plant closes and they don’t retire, Donahoe said.Julie Truss, the Ohio Postal Workers Union official, noted that the labor contract covering workers limits layoffs, and speculated Thursday that the U.S. Postal Service will offer a retirement incentive.“They’re going to have to offer some kind of major retirement incentive because with the closing there wouldn’t be enough jobs left for people,” Truss said.The contract prohibits layoffs of workers with six years or more of consecutive postal service employment.The U.S. Postal Service, meanwhile, has asked Congress to override the no-layoff provisions in its labor contracts.The service also has asked Congress to allow it to eliminate Saturday mail delivery, and change or eliminate an annual roughly $5.5 billion payment the agency is required to pay into a fund covering health-care benefits for future retirees. This is in additional to a proposal to close hundreds more post offices throughout the country.The American Postal Workers Union — the national organization that includes the Akron local union — and other labor organizations are planning rallies nationwide Sept. 27 in support of proposed legislation that would allow the postal service to save money by applying billions of dollars of “pension overpayments” to the funding of the health-care benefits for future retirees.The legislation “would give us financial breathing room as we make changes,” she said. “It really could help the postmaster general not to go the extreme of damaging the service to the American public.”Postal workers will rally in Akron at 4 p.m. Sept. 27 outside the Federal Court House at Main and Market streets in downtown Akron.The Associated Press contributed to this report. Katie Byard can be reached at 330-996-3781 or kbyard@thebeaconjournal.com.