Thousands of jobs are at stake in Ohio if the U.S. Postal Service follows through on its plans to lay off 120,000 employees nationwide.

The service had more than 20,000 employees and 1,200 offices in Ohio at the end of the last fiscal year, according to Victor Dubina, a Cleveland-based spokesman for the Postal Service. And the jobs are solid middle-class, with an average salary of $55,900.

Dubina could not provide Dayton-area numbers Wednesday, but Amy Thorpe, legislative director for the Dayton-area local of the American Postal Workers Union, said her organization represents about 500 people. But Thorpe’s local only represents clerks, motor vehicle and maintenance workers, she said. Three other unions represent mail carriers, rural mail carriers and mail handlers.

Thorpe said her Dayton local is organizing an informational picket and rally next Wednesday morning, Sept. 14, in front of the Main Post Office at 1111 E. Fifth St.

“We will be passing out leaflets,” Thorpe said. “We’ll be informing citizens what has caused the financial crisis, how it can be fixed, and what they can do to help save their service.”

In testimony before Congress on Tuesday, Postmaster General Patrick R. Donahue asked lawmakers for authority to make a number of changes in the postal service’s operations, including closing offices, scaling back mail delivery to five days a week and reducing the workforce.

Donahue said the service’s studies have shown a need to reduce the workforce by 220,000 by 2015. About 100,000 employees will be eligible to retire during that time, he said.

Dubina said revenue is falling because people are mailing less. From 2006 to 2011, the service saw a 21.6 percent decline in mailings — from 213 billion pieces of mail to 167 billion, he said.

The drop is both a result of increasing use of the Internet and electronic billing, bill-paying and communications, and also the bad economy, he said, because companies are sending fewer advertisements through the mail.

In addition, he said, Congress in 2006 put a heavy mandate on the service, requiring it to pay $5.5 billion a year into a fund for future retiree health benefits.

“In essence, what they did was take a 75-year estimate and have us pay that off in 10 years,” he said. “That means we’re paying for the retirement funds of people who haven’t even joined the postal service yet.

“We’re the only government agency — the only business in the country — that does that. Everyone else essentially does that on a pay-as-you-go basis.”

The postmaster general has asked Congress for flexibility with payments into that fund as well as handling its other retirement funds and health care insurance, Dubina said.

In any case, Thorpe said, postal workers are not the cause of the service’s fiscal crisis.

“To lay the blame at the feet of our employees and our wages and pay is totally erroneous and untrue,” said Thorpe, a postal service clerk who said she was speaking as a union official.

Thorpe said mass layoffs and office closings won’t just impact postal employees.

“Make no mistake about it,” she said, “if these changes do happen, it will be the postal customers who pay the price.”

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2393 or kmccall @DaytonDailyNews.com.