The United States Postal Service has told its 443 East Pittsburgh employees that it will close its Remote Encoding Center in the borough Nov. 14.

The center's employees are drawn mostly from east Allegheny County and parts of Westmoreland County. The postal service will help the 142 unionized employees transfer to other postal service jobs.

The center opened in 1995 with 800 employees and was seen as a significant development for the borough, which was declared economically distressed in 1992. It was among the first of 55 centers that would open nationwide.

The encoding centers began opening in 1995 to process mail with illegible or incomplete addresses that could not be handled by the service's automated mail sorting technology. But improved technology has reduced the centers' work loads and the service has shuttered 48 of the centers nationwide.