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Now that Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., has re-introduced a bill to raise the cap on overtime pay for managers, the overtime pay issue is back on the legislative radar screen.

This year's bill, H.R. 582, is identical to a measure Davis introduced during the 105th Congress last May. It would raise the cap from from one and a half times GS-10, Step 1 to one and a half times GS-15, Step 1. Before Congress acts on the bill this year, lawmakers will likely want to know how much raising the cap will cost.

Boosting the cap a full five grades may be too rich a proposal for lawmakers' blood. Last year, in a civil service reform package, the House Civil Service Subcommittee suggested raising the cap only to GS-10, Step 6 over five years.

But the package, which included dozens of other proposals as well, fizzled amid union and administration opposition to various provisions.

A Davis aide said the congressman will ask the Congressional Budget Office to determine how much raising the cap to GS-15 would cost the government.

In some agencies, the question may be moot. Budget concerns mean that some agencies are not offering managers overtime pay at all, instead issuing them compensatory time off. The rule is that for every overtime hour worked, the manager should get an hour off.

The rule is different for the employees managers supervise during those overtime hours, however. Those employees must receive overtime pay unless they specifically request comp-time instead.

The Social Security Administration got in trouble in recent years for violating that rule. The agency has been paying thousands of employees back pay for overtime work. The total back pay the agency has dished out tallies up to more than $27 million.

Managers, meanwhile, also face a second cap. Their total compensation cannot exceed the maximum bi-weekly pay for GS-15, Step 10. Once they reach that cap, any overtime they work is performed gratis for Uncle Sam.

John Priolo, a production resource training manager at the Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard in Hawaii, said the overtime cap affects primarily first- and second-line supervisors. At Priolo's level of management, uncompensated overtime is a fact of life, he said.

Wage grade employees at the shipyard often make more during overtime than the managers who supervise them, Priolo said.

"The shipyards have been cut back extensively on allowable full time equivalents," Priolo said. "To make up for that, you have to work a lot of overtime."

Priolo recalled that when he was a front-line supervisor, any overtime hours he worked beyond 25 hours during a pay period went uncompensated, though he frequently received letters from his bosses thanking him for donating so much time to the Navy.

Intrepid managers wondering if their agencies are properly compensating them for overtime can refer to the overtime provisions of Title 5 of the U.S. Code, which governs federal pay. The House of Representatives has a searchable version of the code at law.house.gov/uscsrch.htm. Enter "overtime" in the search-words field and "5" in the title field to find the overtime provisions.

Still Another Pay Cap

With all the overtime caps and other limitations on federal pay and benefits, one reader wrote in to Pay and Benefits Watch following last week's column to say that the cap on federal executives' pay is of little concern to most feds.

Most managers don't see themselves becoming senior executives, and those that do are probably not particularly discouraged by the cap, the reader contended.

"We may choose to leave federal service when a current offer from the outside provides better compensation than our current pay, but not because we try to predict that 10 years down the line, for those few of us who might make SES, our pay may reach a plateau," the reader wrote.

If you have comments about this or any previous column, please e-mail them to letters@govexec.com.