(Release 1580 can be skipped for ASUCLA and Hastings, which have
no RX collective bargaining employees.)

Per the release letter, "The contract between The University and UPTE
Research Support Professionals Unit (RX), effective June 30, 2004,
stipulates that all open range employees in the bargaining unit be placed
onto a step structure as of July 1, 2004".  For RX, a whole step
structure will be used.

R1580 provides a one-time program, PPOT1580, to handle the conversion
of RX open range distributions to step-based rates and numbers.  Details
about eligibility criteria can be found in the release documents.  The
process goes like this:

1 - First, the TCT must be updated with the step-based RX rates.
     Corporate Title Code system transactions to do this were made available
     on May 3rd as dataset  FTPUSRn.GET.TCSTCT.D050304 .  The reason
     is that the one-time program will determine new step numbers and rates
     by comparing the employee distribution rates in the EDB with TCT rates.
     When an exact match of rates occurs, the corresponding TCT step number
     will be assigned.  When rates do not match exactly, the next higher
TCT step
     number and rate will be assigned.  If the EDB rate is higher than all TCT
     step rates, the highest TCT step and rate will be assigned.

     These transactions were applied to the TCT on May 5th for Davis,
     Riverside, SC, and SB.  SD, please let us know if you've processed them.

2 - Next, the one-time program should be run.  This will not update the
     EDB; instead it will generate file maintenance update transactions.
     Additionally, like most of these one-time collective bargaining programs,
     there is reporting of the changes (a central office version in name order,
     and a departmental version in name within department order), and an
     electronic file in tab-delimited format, as well as a costing file
with action
     code 43, are produced.

3 - A message table update is required to lower the online severity for
     message 08-722 from employee reject to warning level "so that valid
     changes to the employee's distribution record via CICS on-line is not
     rejected when the Distribution Off/Above Scale Code (EDB 2050) is 'R'
     and the Distribution Step (EDB 2049) is not blank.  Note that the batch
     severity level value ... is already set to '3'."

4 - The final step will be to process the EDB update transactions generated
     by PPOT1580.

IMPLEMENTATION

   This release is date-mandated, and the entire process described above
must be completed prior to the first July compute.  We'll begin by
performing the usual release testing.  After that, I propose that we install
the release and perform step 2 (also step 1 for SD, if needed) fairly soon
in June.  That will give you an opportunity to review the results and tweak
EDB data if needed.  Then, when we're closer to the date when you want
to update the EDB, we will run the one-time program again and perform
steps 3 and 4.  Even if you don't find a need to adjust EDB entries, it
would be safest to run again so that generation numbers in the
transactions will be up to date.

Please let us know if this approach meets with your approval.  We'll look
forward to hearing from you when you would like to schedule the EDB
update and how you would like to handle the costing.

   bvb