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 One Beltway Center |
President's MessageAugust 30, 2007 Greetings Fellow Postmasters and LEAGUE Members Dear Leaguers, PAY PACKAGE After 10 months of work by the management organizations, Naps, Napus and the League, the Postmaster Organizations have come to an agreement with Postal Headquarters regarding pay, in other words, we have a pay package! We will provide the official Postal Service package elsewhere on this page, but I will briefly go over some of the major changes and items of interest. Of course, Postmasters’ pay is based on the Pay for Performance (PFP) system. Currently, Postmasters are rated on their core requirements on representative rating scores of 0, 6, 11, or 14. This did not allow for much wiggle room for your evaluator. Beginning in FY08, the entire range, 1 through 15 can be assigned, which will allow a rater to give a score more in line with what he or she really thinks you deserve. In the past, if you were a “contributor”, you got a score of 6, now you can receive a score of 4 through 9 within the contributor cells, or 10 through 12 in the high contributor cells, and so on, which will give you a more precise rating for your achievements. This allows an evaluator to give the maximum CORE score available without breaking the process rule of going 5 points above your composite score (this action would require higher level approval). This will give your evaluator the opportunity to reward you properly for your efforts and possibly move your final rating enough to increase your overall payout. The new rules can be a tremendous tool to motivate when wielded by the hand of a good manager. As you know, Postmaster pay raises are based on his or her scores on Pay for Performance. If a Postmaster will receive a raise of 6%, and that 6% of his base pay will not take him beyond the maximum for his pay grade, then the entire amount will be applied to his base pay. If a Postmaster is close to “topping out’, then the amount of his 6% that will take him to the maximum of his pay grade will be applied to base pay, anything beyond that will be paid as a bonus. More than 65% of Postmasters have not yet reached the maximum in their pay grades. The percent increase to the maximums and minimums for all Postmasters grades effective Jan 5, 2008 and Jan 17, 2009 will be 2% per year, and effective Jan 10, 2010 and Jan 15, 2011 will be 2.25% per year. While we were disappointed that these increases were not larger, when we considered that as part of the new Postal Reform law the Postal Service is mandated now to operate under the Consumer Price Index (CPI), we knew we had an uphill battle. The real key here will be for a Postmaster to maximize her return on PFP. The average payout last year was about 5%. If you look back at pay raises before PFP was implemented four years ago, the average raise was only 3%. Much of the League’s emphasis over the last few years has been to educate Postmasters to understand the PFP system and to take a hands-on approach to helping Postmasters to get the most out of PFP. We are still committed to this path. As part of the pay talks we were able to identify some problem areas with the PFP process. The Postal Service agreed to work with the Postmaster organizations to address these problems. League Executive vice president, Mark Strong, and Napus Executive Director, Ken Engstrom put our concerns in the form of a proposal to Postal Headquarters. We feel extremely confident that if Postal Headquarters implements our proposals, PFP will return to being a positive motivator for Postmasters. WSCs Notable, because of their absence from the final pay package, are a number of issues. First of all, you’ll see nothing there on Workload Service Credits. In spite of the many hours spent on this particular issue, the Postal Service and the Postmaster Organizations do not yet see eye to eye on WSCs. While not part of this pay package, Postmaster General Jack Potter has committed to us that Postal Headquarters will continue to work with us on WSCs. This is likely the best approach; I always held that WSCs is a stand-alone issue. What was on the table from Postal Headquarters was not in the best interest of Postmasters. One important issue that we raised at the beginning of our deliberations with Postal Headquarters was PMR pay. There was not a word about PMR pay and training in the pay package, however, Doug Tulino, Vice President, Labor promised to address this with us soon as well. Of course, we intend to take full advantage of this opportunity to do something good for this very important part of our workforce. Other items that are not directly involved with pay talks and pay but that do have great influence on a Postmasters ability to be successful will be discussed with Postal Headquarters. We have an issue with Supervisor Workload Credits (SWCs) that needs attention. Headquarters has expressed an interest in addressing Function 4 with us, and we are committed to extend talks to include such things as Small Office Variance, Customer Service Variance, etc. We need to make sure that these programs generate reliable data that is used uniformly across our nation. These pay talks are the result of a tremendous amount of teamwork. I received extremely valuable support and input from fellow Leaguers, Executive VP Mark Strong, and past National President Steve Lenoir, as well as from Ken Engstrom, Napus Executive Director and Hugh Hager, Napus National Editor. We received help from Napus and League Postmasters from all over the country including from states like Texas, Connecticut, New York and California. We worked very closely with President Ted Keating, Executive Vice President Louis Atkins, and Secretary/Treasurer Jay Killackey from Naps in putting our initial pay package together. Last, but certainly not least, is Dale Goff, president of Napus. He and I worked shoulder to shoulder throughout the entire pay consultation process. The success of our efforts can be attributed to the commitment by all of us to do what is right for Postmasters. Sincerely, Charley Mapa |
League EventsJanuary 30 - February 2, 2010 Crystal Gateway Marriott July 18 - July 22, 2010 National League of Postmasters Convention Town and Country |
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