On July 17, a federal trial court dismissed NAPS’s lawsuit against the U.S. Postal Service for violations of federal law relating to compensation of supervisors, postmasters, and other managerial employees, as well as to the scope of NAPS’s representation of those employees, ruling that the rights established by the Postal Reorganization Act (PRA) are “not subject to judicial review.”
The decision of the federal district court for the District of Columbia is the latest twist in the ongoing dispute between NAPS and the Postal Service over pay for the almost-50,000 managers, supervisors, postmasters, and other professional and administrative employees paid under the USPS Executive and Administrative Schedule (EAS). In December 2018, a three-member factfinding panel, convened at NAPS’s request by the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, held a two-day hearing to review the 2016-2019 pay package issued by the Postal Service in 2018. In April 2019, the factfinding panel unanimously found that EAS compensation was not comparable to private sector compensation, that the pay-for-performance system is “seriously flawed,” and that the current Supervisory Differential Adjustment is unreasonably calculated and inadequate, resulting in thousands of postal supervisors and postmasters being paid less than the clerks and carriers they supervise. The Postal Service then rejected most of the panel’s findings and recommendations, prompting NAPS to file its lawsuit in July 2019.
