According to one member of the National Association of Postal Supervisors (see attachment), “In the Pacific Area the vast majority of EAS vacancies are covered by non-career employees.” Non-career employees are “increasingly becoming the preferred employee over career letter carriers, mail handlers and clerks for a multitude of reasons, most importantly due to the low compensation these employees receive because they cannot be paid higher level like career employees must be paid and have extremely limited benefits.”
“The situation being created by non-career employees having supervisory experience over the career is resulting in a lack of applicants for posted vacancies, and then the positions are posted to non-career. This could hurt NAPS in the long run because we end up with EAS employees that have very limited Postal experience and are not a part of the culture, not even understanding basic rights and regulations, let alone caring about them. These are many of the employees that work extra hours for free, do craft work throughout the day when needed, use their personal vehicles without mileage compensation, and do many other things that make our long-standing members ‘look bad’ for following the established rules and regulations.”
About two dozen EAS-17 supervisor jobs are posted at USPS.com right now for only non-career employees. Four are in the Seattle District. Their starting salary is $61,776 plus benefits. Allegedly, no career employees wanted these jobs. If true, that is a sad commentary about the stress levels in the US Postal Service. Many supervisors complain of 12-14 hour days with no overtime.
First Name: Don
Last Name: Cheney
Email: doncheney@live.com
Union/Local: APWU – Auburn WA Local
Office held if any: Retired President