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Story in Mailers’ Publication
Pointedly Misses the Point About Postal Salaries

Burrus Update 11-2009, Aug. 21, 2009

In yet another attempt to promote the myth that postal employees are not deserving of their collectively-bargained salaries, the chief spokesperson at PostCom, a mailers-industry publication, has written a story that compares the salary schedules of USPS Electronic Technicians (ET 10) and ETs in the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

As presented, the comparisons confirmed the premise of the article: Postal employees are overpaid. It’s the sort of nonsense we expect from PostCom, but it would have been nice if in this instance the author had assembled the “facts” properly before sticking his foot in his mouth.

The comparisons made in the story [Journal of Postal Commerce, July 24, 2009 - PDF (see pages 4-6)] were as follows:

	Entry Salary
USPS Electronic Technician (ET 10)	$54,298
FAA Electronic Technician (GS-8)	$37,075

 

There are several problems with these data, including that the entry-level salary for the postal employee is $2,000 less than presented, and that the aviation agency’s ETs are on non-GS (“F/G”) pay bands, which means higher compensation across the board.

Another consistent fact error in the PostCom piece is that the author’s numbers don’t include “Top Salaries” — more than three-quarters (78 percent) of USPS ETs are at top scale (only 1 percent are at entry level).

A final significant lapse in the editorial comparison is the failure to factor in “locality pay” — which all FAA employees receive regardless of location. Here’s a more useful salary-comparison presentation:

	Entry Salary	Top Salary
USPS Electronic Technician (ET 10)	$52,298	$61,502
FAA Electronic Technician (F/G band)	$38,371-$45,276	$69,568-$82,088

 

Although the chart does show that the starting salary for a postal ET is higher than that of an ET at the FAA, the salaries for the vast majority of employees at both agencies are at top scale, and the lowest-paid top-scale FAA Electronic Technicians earn 12 percent more than their postal counterparts. Some do far better: A top-step aviation agency ET in San Francisco is paid 33 percent more than a top-step postal ET in the same area.

The comparisons made in the PostCom story — botched or not — prove nothing except that postal salaries have evolved. They have done so through the process of collective bargaining, under the legal standard that USPS employment policy requires that compensation and benefits will be “maintained at a standard of comparability to the compensation and benefits paid for comparable levels of work in the private sector of the economy.”

In his zeal to paint a negative picture of postal employees the PostCom writer applied a standard that is not factually relevant. The comparisons are among postal employees and FAA “government employees,” but law does not require a comparison to the standards of government employees.

And even when applying the illegal standard, the typical FAA Electronic Technician is paid an amount that averages 25 percent higher than that paid a postal employee.

Clearly, we have more work to do in order to achieve parity with FAA employees.

William Burrus
President

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