The U.S. Postal Service may be facing a $1 billion dollar deficit this year but it is prepared to pay its senior managers additional pay incentives of up to 25% later this year, DIRECT Newsline has learned.
A month after taking office Postmaster General Jack Potter advised the senior officials in a July 3 memo about the potential increase in extra income, which previously, sources said, averaged about 15%.
According to that memo, a copy of which was obtained by DIRECT Newsline, Potter states that “if we continue our current trend in work hour reductions, the maximum potential increase to Postal Career Executive Service (PCES) executive reserve account could approach 25% this year.”
Although the term “executive reserve account” was not explained, it is believed by postal sources to be an account that is separate from a senior manager’s salary account.
Under the postal service’s Economic Value Added (EVA) – Pay for Performance Program (PPP) that could translate to a possible extra $20,000 for a senior manager earning $80,000 a year.
Earlier this year the EVA program came under fire from at least two senators – Fred Thompson (R-TN) and Jeff Sessions (R-AL) – for paying some $280 million in what they termed “bonuses” to roughly 80,000 managers while predicting a whopping $2 billion to $3 billion deficit for the current fiscal year.
Thompson, who chairs the Senate’s Governmental Affairs Committee, and Sessions, a member of the Senate Judiciary’s administrative oversight and courts subcommittee, have been reviewing the EVA program. So far they have not issued a report of their findings.
Potter, with indirect references to the description of the program as a “bonus” program for senior postal officials by Thompson and Sessions, said the EVA program “has been mischaracterized as a bonus program.”
According to the PMG postal productivity is up and “while it appears that there may only be a slight growth in volume, workload is up due to the growth in delivery points and work hours are below the same period last year.”
There was no immediate comment from either senator or postal officials about the memo in which Potter notes that while they generate “positive economic growth,” he quickly added that ” if we continue our current trend in workhour reductions, the maximum potential increase to a PCES executive’s reserve account could approach 25% this year.
The USPS, he said, has “made great progress this year in a very difficult business environment with challenging goals,” Potter also says that building on the workhour reductions and productivity gains of 2.5%, year to date, we have reduced workhours further and achieved additional Total Factor Productivity gains of 2%, while urging managers to “build on this momentum, continue gaining efficiency, and improve service performance.”
Concluding with an indirect reference to the projected deficit of at least $1 billion in September with the postal service’s fiscal year ends, Potter tells senior postal managers that “by pulling together, we can minimize our loss and earn additional pay for the performance achieved.”
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