Pay upon return to SF?

[Guest]

Any other retention candidates out there trying to get any kind of pay raise now that they have another degree under their belts? Not only is my SF pretending a PhD doesn't count for anything, I found out last month that they've had a policy all along denying me pay raises year-to-year. So now I go back with a PhD making about $10k/year less than I would have had I just stayed on base with a master's. Anyone else in this boat/frustrated/know how to address it?

[Guest]

Sounds like an awful place to work. I could see them denying you pay raises, but not recalculating the salary based on your current GS position is not acceptable.

If you're not going in at least as GS-11, then you can definitely submit an appeal
https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversig ... decisions/

Honestly though, the real moral to the story is: HOW DID YOU NOT GET THIS IN WRITING FIRST??????

[Guest]

Sounds like an awful place to work. I could see them denying you pay raises, but not recalculating the salary based on your current GS position is not acceptable.

If you're not going in at least as GS-11, then you can definitely submit an appeal
https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversig ... decisions/

Honestly though, the real moral to the story is: HOW DID YOU NOT GET THIS IN WRITING FIRST??????

I can tell you from personal experience, getting it in writing does no good. Nobody's going to go through the trouble to take them to task for something that they lied about, verbally or in writing, and they know that. If anything, it's just more infuriating when you get it in writing.

[Guest]

I can tell you from personal experience, getting it in writing does no good. Nobody's going to go through the trouble to take them to task for something that they lied about, verbally or in writing, and they know that. If anything, it's just more infuriating when you get it in writing.

Sure they might not care about paying him more, but having that would go a long way toward helping him bail early on his commitment. You can't make a GS8 job, tell someone it's suitable for a GS11, have them rack up years of additional commitment time, and give them zero gain on their end. That's called fraud.

[Guest]

It's not so much that it's not in writing... it's that because I am a retention candidate the lines are a bit blurrier. There are no strict guidelines for forcing an increase in pay band for us after graduation. My SF is technically doing nothing wrong per the guidelines of SMART. Ethically it's shitty, of course, and it makes me feel betrayed and as though my willingness to commit to the DoD is being abused in the worst possible way... but technically they did nothing wrong.

I will look into the appeal to OPM- thanks to the poster who gave that suggestion.

[Guest]

Isn't a follow-on award a completely separate award...so they would have had to give you a new offer letter.

Or are they not handing those out these days? We all got unofficial ones at orientation back when they still did that.

[Retentioner]

Nope - in my case, at least, there was no follow-on award. I just returned to work, and my supervisor emailed SMART to tell them when my start-date was. I had a similar situation with pay. My SF isn't on the GS system, so any and all pay raises are determined by year-end reviews. My supervisor tried to give me no raise that year, arguing that I wasn't in the office, so other people in our branch deserved the points more than me. I countered that, if this was private industry, I'd be looking at a 10% raise, at least, for my new degree.

I ended up filing a complaint with my department head, and got what I felt was a reasonable pay increase for a Bachelors-to-Masters. It's all about whining loud enough to be heard over the bureaucracy.

[veriste]

Retentioner:

Would you mind PMing me your SF location? I would *love* to be able to say that this policy is not being followed by other SFs. No offense taken if you don't want to be the test case, can totally understand that. My SF is using the exact same logic for me. I am arguing that I have produced more than the people at their desks- my research is appearing soon in an international news report and will be attributed to the Navy, let's see how many other employees can claim that.

Nope - in my case, at least, there was no follow-on award. I just returned to work, and my supervisor emailed SMART to tell them when my start-date was. I had a similar situation with pay. My SF isn't on the GS system, so any and all pay raises are determined by year-end reviews. My supervisor tried to give me no raise that year, arguing that I wasn't in the office, so other people in our branch deserved the points more than me. I countered that, if this was private industry, I'd be looking at a 10% raise, at least, for my new degree.

I ended up filing a complaint with my department head, and got what I felt was a reasonable pay increase for a Bachelors-to-Masters. It's all about whining loud enough to be heard over the bureaucracy.