Federal law provides that compensation and benefits for Postal Service officers and employees shall be comparable to the rates and types of compensation paid in the private sector. To achieve this, negotiations between the Postal Service and unions continue to apply the principle of moderate restraint set forth in past interest arbitration awards. The compensation of most bargaining units meets or exceeds private sector levels. The average annual pay and benefits for career bargaining unit employees was $70,140 this year, excluding corporate-wide expenses that cannot be attributed to individual employees.
Pay for supervisors, postmasters, and other nonbargaining employees provides an adequate and reasonable differential between first-line supervisors and bargaining-unit employees, and meets or exceeds comparability standards.
The law governing the Postal Service also provides that executives should be compensated at a level comparable to the private sector. However, the Postal Reorganization Act (1970) precludes the ability to achieve a comparable standard due to legislated compensation caps. Within these statutory salary limitations, the Postal Service continues to provide performance-driven pay actions in support of enhancing its performance-based culture.
A new compensation support system was implemented in September for employees of the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC). The PRC received a separate rate schedule code for better identification and programming of its personnel system. A customized compensation system was established to improve administration of the unique requirements of the PRC’s pay and benefit policies. The PRC’s unique requirements include a pay structure with different grades and salary ranges than the Postal Service and differences in benefit eligibility criteria.
