Missing Overtime Pay
I have received the following information from USPS Management regarding many Oakland APWU employees missing overtime pay in their payroll checks for pay period 21:
The root cause is a programming change that was implemented last pay period for APWU non-career employees (PSE’s) to start being paid postal overtime versus FLSA overtime. (Postal overtime is triggered in excess of 8 hours per day; FLSA overtime is triggered in excess of 40 hours per week). The programming change fixed the non-career employees as designed but had an unintended consequence with the adverse impact on the career employees with overtime hours in their record. The Payroll Calculation Verification group noticed a drop in the number of payroll records processed, however, this was improperly attributed to hurricane-impacted facilities being asked to hold their timekeeping until day.
In order to preserve the integrity of the hundreds of thousands of employees whose payroll has already successfully processed, the best solution jointly determined by Accounting and IT is to have the 90,000 employees paid via salary advance at their local office. This solution has been in use for about 6 months now, though never used on a scale this size.
The Eagan Accounting Service Center is preparing detailed instructions and communications for the field and will ramp up on staffing the help desk in anticipation of the increase in call volume. Jack Meyer is informing the Area Controllers and Area Accounting Managers as well.
We are exploring all options to get these employees paid timely and have hourly calls tonight to determine the best solution and execute on it right away. We never want to be in a position where we are not paying our employees, but we especially do not want to be in this position during a contract negotiation. We do not yet have an assessment on how many employees are impacted.
Will send you an update as soon as I have one.
Fredric Jacobs
President
For a PDF version of this announcement, click here.