Starting this week, the US postal service will begin consolidating and closing dozens of mail processing plants.

A last minute effort by the American Postal Workers Union to stop the plain failed on Friday.

Some forty-eight plants across the country will be impacted by the consolidation over the next two months.

The agency also says it is reducing the size of it's workforce.

It offered buyouts and retirement packages to nearly seventy-thousand employees.

Last year the agency lost more than five billion dollars.