EAS—A Management Position Like No Other
By Dee Perez
NAPS New York Area Vice President
Summer has arrived and every EAS employee knows what that means. Your work responsibility has increased at least tenfold if not more because there is no rest for the weary EAS employees on the front lines. You’re where the rubber meets the road 365 days a year while being underappreciated for all you do!
Frontline EAS employees are the most important part of making the USPS successful. Others may say craft positions are the most important. I understand why, but frontline EAS employees are the ones who are juggling so many different responsibilities all at once, every single day—not craft employees.
Yet EAS employees are the ones given the most responsibility; no other leadership position comes close to the responsibility you own every day. Nevertheless, that’s the job. You still have to be responsible and ensure your employees are productive every single day.
Some in leadership roles may think you are giving away the store. But they haven’t walked a mile in your shoes in quite a while. Meantime, they continue to live in their former glory days (cue Bruce Springsteen’s song) while things have changed dramatically since the most-recent RIF.
Today, we need more EAS employees in the field—not fewer—in order to hold craft employees accountable to reach the service goals and scores; technology alone will not work. EAS employees are juggling what appears to be 100 different balls of responsibilities every day. Nobody else, by the way, is given the same amount of responsibility anywhere in the Postal Service.
What is needed is some empathy for the beaten-down, exhausted and overworked frontline EAS employees to whom nobody seems to listen. Every day, frontline EAS employees are spending countless hours analyzing and answering to performance reports, heat maps and pivoting routes.
EAS employees question employees’ performance, attend excessive learn-and-grow training, figure out schedules with fewer employees and conduct labor tasks and observations. And they attend Zoom meetings every day, at times for hours on end, then deal with irrational and irate customers while figuring how to achieve F-2 and F-4 goals in order to reach the top of their PFP pay band in fewer than 25 years!
I’m hearing the new concern that has reared its ugly head in many Zoom meetings is the lack of dignity and respect shown toward EAS employees and how they are ridiculed in front of their peers. There is no reason to issue verbal threats and embarrass people in front of their peers while in Zoom meetings or in person.
This is not acceptable behavior from any leader. I understand the pressure placed on the shoulders of frontline EAS employees and their superiors because “when everything is a priority, then nothing is a priority.”
Enjoy your summer, folks, and don’t forget your homework: Sign a new member—including postmasters—every month!
Categories: The Postal Supervisor
