As the hazy, lazy days of summer wane, staff members of Local 237 are gearing up to produce vital information for the almost 30,000 active and retired members who depend on the services they provide to keep apprised of what’s happening in the union.

Among the most important employees in the Local’s headquarters at 216 West 14 St., Manhattan, are the staffers who must cope with the masses of incoming and outgoing mail, and those who spend their days in the basement print shop and bindery turning out almost all of the printed materials that help keep the membership informed. About the only thing the print shop does not turn out is your monthly issue of Newsline.

Just before the vacation season, the two stalwarts of the mail room, José Rodriguez and Martin Cruz, had to stuff envelopes with letters and new brochures explaining all the benefits provided by the union to its members under the most recent contracts.

John Felder, director of the Membership Department, of which the mail room is a part, said the two young men completed this massive job of handling more than 20,000 pieces of mail and getting them addressed and on their way in only two days.

Rodriguez, who began as a clerk in the Membership Department 11 years ago, did a variety of jobs before being named supervisor of the mail room last year. As a clerk he helped with the mailings, assisted in keeping members’ records, and worked on the main switchboard routing incoming calls to the proper parties.

Working with Rodriguez is Martin Cruz, who is responsible for receiving all incoming mail, sorting it by various departments and making sure it is delivered to the proper location.

Cruz also collects outgoing mail from all departments and runs it through the stamping machine, or weighs it for proper postage should the package be heavier than regular envelope size.

He is also responsible for hand-delivering important packages from the various departments in the union to the many sites in the five boroughs where our members are employed.

Much of the correspondence handled by the men in the mail room is generated in the union’s print shop, a state-of-the-art operation from which emanates more than 3 million items a year.

Among the items the print shop produces are copies of all citywide and housing contracts in all titles, the brochures that advise members of the many benefits provided members by the union, flyers alerting members to meeting dates in their titles, tests used by the Education and Training Department to prepare members for civil service exams, texts and manuals.

Printer Jerry Gewirtzman, a long-time veteran of Pressman’s Union Local 1, is the director of all printing operations and guides the three-member staff that assists him in the monumental publishing effort.

Print shop members are James Butts, also a member of Local 1, who handles all bindery operations; Troy Cornelius, who does much of the general work in the print shop, and Zaida Cepeda, who sets all the type for the materials to be printed and also serves as the shop secretary.

As secretary, Cepeda is also responsible for keeping track of, and producing, the thousands of meeting notices that have to be mailed out every month to the respective members.

The bindery is also state-of-the-art, complete with offset printing presses, cameras, typesetting equipment, cutting machines, folders, computers and modern copiers.

The mail room is not the only place to which the print shop delivers its printed materials. The shop also fills the printing needs of our Long Island Division, materials for which are shipped directly from union headquarters to the Long Island Division office. In addition, the print shop also services the Retiree Division, producing and delivering on a regular basis flyers that are mailed by them to all retired members.

The print shop is also responsible for producing all the printed materials needed to make the annual Shop Stewards’ Seminar a success, and whatever is necessary for the annual Founders’ Day Luncheon at the New York Hilton, and the Women’s Conference. Programs, tickets, schedules, place cards, posters and notepads — whatever’s needed — are provided by the print shop for distribution to members who attend the many functions offered by the union every year.