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How to Handle EAS Workhours When Working Sunday Amazon Hubs

How to Handle EAS Workhours When Working Sunday Amazon Hubs
By Dan Mooney
NAPS North Central Area Vice President

There has been much discussion about supervisors being told to change their day off and work Sunday Amazon hub. Let’s look at why Sunday Amazon hub operations should be covered using only T-time.

SWCs (Supervisor Workload Credits) is the program used to establish supervisor staffing in a customer service post office, station or branch. Basically, SWCs are based on a six-day work week, calculated by using the total number of authorized craft employees in a unit, multiplied by a numeric factor assigned to each respective craft position (clerk, carrier, maintenance, custodian, VOMA, HCR, etc.). When the respective factors are multiplied and added together, the total SWCs data determines the number of earned supervisor positions in a unit according to a numeric range.

Because SWCs is craft complement and not workload based, there is no provision to factor in supervisor staffing for Sunday Customer Service workload operations such as an Amazon Sunday delivery operations. Furthermore, SWCs is based and calculated on a six-day-a-week postal operation. Sunday operations are not funded via SWCs.

SWCs-authorized workhours are intended to be used on Saturday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday—not Sunday. Therefore, any EAS Customer Service workhours used on a Sunday should be workhours over and above those authorized by SWCs. In this case, additional straight-time pay (T-time) for EAS employees.

However, there continues to be an initiative by senior management to circumvent the SWCs system to avoid paying EAS T-time. Many Customer Service supervisors (SCSs) throughout the country are being directed to work on Sunday to supervise an operation for delivering Amazon and other packages, better known as Sunday Amazon hubs.

These Sundays also happen to be one of EAS employees’ Form 50 scheduled days-off. However, many SCSs are being scheduled to work these Sunday hubs while, at the same time, being mandated to take another day off during the same work week in lieu of working Sunday. Therefore, postal leadership is “robbing from Peter to pay Paul” at the expense of other EAS mployees in the delivery unit just to avoid paying EAS T-time.

Because Sunday staffing is not funded by SWCs, upper management is taking one, eight-hour supervisory shift to cover a Sunday Customer Service operation. Basically, this work-hour move robs the Monday through Saturday delivery unit of eight hours of supervisory staffing. Again, Sunday operations are not funded, supported or factored into SWCs.

I find it eye-opening that senior management wants to pull EAS work-hours specifically intended to manage a Monday-Saturday operation and put those workhours into a Sun-day hub operation that is receiving extra budget workhours from the district to fund this Sunday operation over and above what SWCs has authorized for staffing.

Where is senior management stashing these extra, budgeted Sunday hub hours from the district if it is not using them as intended for Sunday hub operations? Definitely not to pay EAS employees T-time.

Senior management wants to hold EAS employees accountable for running efficient operations, yet they turn around and rob them of eight hours of earned Monday-Saturday workhours to give to a Sunday Amazon hub operation. I scratch my head trying to figure out their logic! It just doesn’t make sense.

As an example, let’s say a station earns three supervisors from SWCs. Below are three examples of a work week that show how a supervisor changing their day off and working Sunday affects the unit’s operation. No matter how you slice it, the unit will run one supervisor short on one of the other six days of the week.

Again, in this example, SWCs determined the operation should have 120 EAS workhours from Monday through Saturday, but not on Sunday. The district gets those Sunday Amazon hub EAS workhours from the area to distribute as needed. So why are EAS employees being asked to change their days off to work Sunday and short the operation of eight hours of supervisor staffing during the rest of the week?

Senior management can’t have it both ways. It wants operations managed efficiently, yet wants to rob that same unit of EAS workhours for a Sunday operation already being funded through the district to pay T-time to EAS employees scheduled to work on Sunday.

Any change of schedule also should be supported by Form 1723. The higher-level manager making these “bait-and-switch,” day-off changes is responsible for initiating the Form 1723. This form is needed for multiple reasons.

Form 1723 establishes a trail in TACS to support there is no timecard falsification occurring. The form also helps ensure that upper management is requiring supervisors to change their days off on a regular basis and not as an exception, which allows NAPS to better address this issue.

What if you changed your day off and worked Sunday, but didn’t complete a Form 1723 and had an industrial accident? What if you get in a car accident on Sunday while out on the street checking on carriers? If you are on automatic clock rings in TACS, the USPS could say you were not working on Sunday, correct? Make sure your clock rings are accurate and actually reflect the days you work.

I hope this helps clarify how EAS workhours should be handled when working a Sunday Amazon hub. However, it doesn’t address how Sunday workhours should be transferred and budgeted, which is something you all should be asking your manager or your manager’s manager in order to ensure your office is not being set up to fail in NPA.