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The NALC and the USPS have agreed to a national-level settlement on an interpretive dispute regarding a letter carrier who was promoted to Grade 2 from Grade 1, subsequently returned to Grade 1, and had his step increase delayed by 48 weeks. (M-01811)

The NALC took the position that the grievant should have been placed in the step he would have been in, with credit toward his next step increase, as if all service had been in the original grade. The grievant was correctly placed in Step B but was not credited with 48 weeks of waiting time to his Step C increase.

Memorandum of Settlement dated June 13, 1990 (H7C-NA-C 39), states:

Return to Former Lower Grade

Employees returning to a former lower grade must be assigned to the step and the next step increase date as if service had been uninterrupted in the lower grade. In other words, all time, including time spent in the higher grade, is credited toward determining the date of the next periodic step increase in the lower grade. As a practical matter, this means that any Carrier Technician who later successfully bids on a route ends up exactly where they would have been, in pay terms, had they never left Grade 1. In such situations, the time temporarily “lost” as a result of beginning a new waiting period in Grade 2 is fully restored.