Sunday, February 2, 2014

The Postmaster General's Scandalous(?) Salary

What USPS's top executives were paid last year
The U.S. Postal Service reported Friday that Postmaster General Pat Donahoe received total compensation of $436,540 last year. Some people will see that as a shocking amount for a government employee.

But here’s the real shocker: The CEOs of the Postal Service’s two chief rivals, FedEx and United Parcel Service, at last report each earned more than 27 times what Donahoe made.

The most highly compensated postal employee in Fiscal Year 2013 was actually Ellis A. Burgoyne, the Chief Information Officer & Executive VP. His $230,000 salary, $233,000 pension gain, and $7,000 in other compensation gave him a total package of $470,000.

Top executives pay at FedEx
Burgoyne's counterpart at FedEx made 10 times that amount, and the CIO at UPS made nearly seven times Burgyone’s pay. Both FedEx and UPS have smaller workforces than USPS and generate slightly less revenue (though more profit).

From time to time some grandstanding Congressman (annual salary: $174,000, plus really sweet health coverage and pension deals) will complain that the PMG’s compensation is exorbitant and unfair. And then in the next breath he’ll opine that the Postal Service should operate in a more business-like manner.

That brings up a question we’ve asked before: Is the Postal Service a public service or a business? Should it be run by people with MPAs (Master’s of Public Administration) or MBAs (Master’s of Business Administration)?

Do you measure postal executives’ compensation on a fairness scale in comparison with other public servants? Or do you measure it on a competitive scale in relation to other business leaders?

Top executives' pay at UPS
One thing is clear: USPS cannot afford to hire executive talent from the private sector. A middle manager in information technology at FedEx or UPS would probably have to take a pay cut to become the Postal Service’s CIO or Postmaster General.

As a result, USPS executives will continue to be drawn mostly from people who have risen through the ranks. That’s not all bad because it means they understand the unique complexities of the Postal Service and how legislation and politics have boxed the agency in.

But it also means that, to access the private sector’s best thinking and technologies, the Postal Service will continue to be overly reliant on consultants rather than the experience of its own people.

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18 comments:

Fully Kreusened said...

Funny you say someone with experience could be PMG. With the USPS, the less experience you have, the more qualified you are for management.....

Anonymous said...

Seriously sick when they want to cut the jobs of the real workers. Just awful how he can say were in trouble and he's rolling in the dough. I'm gonna not say no more before the F bombs start. POS

Anonymous said...

Wasn't it J. P. Morgan that said the head of a company should make 20 time the salary of it's employees? Well, top pay for a letter carrier is 57000, that would put Donahoe's pay at over a Million a year. As a letter carrier, I could live with that, but the executives in FedEx, UPS and the rest are, just like most of industry, way over paid, in my opinion...

Anonymous said...

The CEO s of those other companies are running in the black, and their stock prices are near their highs. The Postmaster General is running our company to the ground, and for that he should be fired. If he was running The Post Office, in the black, he to should be compensated well, but he has done a poor job and should step down.

Anonymous said...

Can't fix stupid, postal mismanagement, overpaid do nothing mgt, we must have plenty of money to waste

Anonymous said...

Funniest part of the PMG's salary is that it is the direct result of Congress removing the CAPS on the PMG and Postal Exec's salaries and compensation to allow the USPS to attract more outside people. LOL! Like everything else Congress has done "to the USPS" it only resulted in unearned raises for the continued employment of those already in those positions. ;)

ET-10 Simmons said...

Dead Tree once again completely misses the mark and the point by comparing apples to orange aide. Donahoe started out as a CLERK 37 years ago. He now makes more than the President of the United States. He shouldn't. 'Nuf said...

Anonymous said...

I wonder if Postal mgt. would be able to make it in the private sector.

Anonymous said...

If we're going to give the bigwigs at the PO the same pay as USP how about giving the carriers the same pay as the UPS drivers? How come that NEVER comes up in the conversation about equal pay between the PO and the private sector?.

Anonymous said...

PMG. Potter got the big increase and so did all the managers in 2005 or 2006. They all pushed for the postal bill to give the government 5Billion a year.That is when the post office started to lose money.

Anonymous said...

So true Anonymous February 3, 2014 at 2:54 AM

Anonymous said...

Is not near enough based on what is transpiring with the USPS and what he has accomplished the last few years. The USPS cannot afford what the private sectors pays their CEO's!

Anonymous said...

Comparing apples and oranges indeed. Postal employees are paid reasonably well and if you took his entire salary and divvied it up you would each get less than one dollar! You pensions also kick in much earlier than the SS that UPS and Fed-Ex employees rely on. The issue is the pre-funding of the pension plan - the rest is all NOISE. You should be applauding the fact that a clerk could make it to the top - not ripping him for it.

Anonymous said...

So the PMG who used to be under public servant pay scale constraints now calls himself CEO and has increased his pay--what did anyone expect when George Bush canceled the postal service's goal from not for profit to for profit?

But while he increased his pay he had changed the post office's dependability through long term employment to a revival of Circuit City and Day Labor philosophy.

Village post offices are CPUs run by for profit businesses manned by temp workers and new hires are also temp workers.

Professionally qualified managers know that a high turnover among employees and an organization that does not have long term goals for employees are destined to failure.

So the dependability and security of mail manned by employees committed to long term employment and watched by postal inspectors will now be replaced by day workers at Staples, Office Depot and pawnshops who have USPS logos!

Anonymous said...

Management's salaries have gone up and employees salaries have gone down:

What is scandalous is how much harm has been inflicted on middle class working Americans!

Please tell us about the pay of CCAs, RCAs and PSEs during this same period of increase in pay for management.

Why not show both sides of the coin?

Also, postage rates have been increased on ordinary Americans but far too many discounts and loopholes have been instituted in the new rates!

Unknown said...

I worked as a photo journalist for 11 years, and took pictures of two Presidents, governors, and people in all political positions down to mayor. One common thread among all of them was that they were not paid enough to be honest unless they had very high morals or they were extremely rich. With low salaries they were easy prey for people who wanted favors which did not help the people of the community, city, state or country.

An honest hard working leader can earn 10 to 1,000 times as much as a politician, working in the corporate world with the same amount of responsibility. The political job attracts the opposite of what we need, the corrupt, greedy, and power hungry individual.

Yearly Salary, Politicians vs. Corporate Top Executive

Mayor of Miami Beach, $10,000
Mayor of Miami Dade County, $150,000
Governor of NJ, 4th Highest Paid Governor in US, $175,000
President of the United States, $400,000 Plus $50,000 Expense

Exxon CEO, $40,300,000, OVER 40 MILLION
ATT CEO, $20,240,457 OVER 20 MILLION
Comcast CEO, $26,900,000 OVER 26 MILLION
Ford CEO, $29,500,000 OVER 29 MILLION
Macy's CEO, $11,300,000 OVER 11 MILLION

The top corporate executives listed get 11 million to 40 million per year vs. politicians who get $10 thousand to 400 thousand. Good politicians are great at making deals but most of the time, the area of what favors are attached to the deal get gray and many times they are illegal.

So what is my point, pay the politician more and have incentive packages attached to their salary for saving the government money and have every dime spent, transparent.

From my personal experience, I know we the citizens and taxpayers will come out on top, both financially and in services performed for the benefit of the people not the select few.

As far as the Postmaster General position, a great corporate guy could turn the post office around in a year, of course we will have to pay him or her, but it would be worth it. The last figure I saw had the post office losing 16 billion a year.

Anonymous said...

What you need to worry about is USPS taking people with no relevant education, no relevant experience, and no evidence of relevant competency, and putting them into a job like Chief Technology Officer.

The second thing you need to worry about is whether it makes any sense to take a world class person and put them in a job like CTO, when they are constrained from doing any of the things that a world class person is paid to do.

Trees Planet said...

Very funny thinking. But where is dead trees.