(Most of release 1581 can be skipped for ASUCLA and Hastings, which have
no TX collective bargaining employees, however the change to program
PPEC051 must be implemented.)

R1581 is similar to r1580, but is in support of a different collective
bargaining
unit, has different selection criteria, and will establish a step structure
based on half step, instead of whole step, intervals.

Per the release letter, "The contract between The University and UPTE
Research Support Professionals Unit (TX), 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 TX, a half step structure
will be used.

R1581 provides a one-time program, PPOT1581, to handle the conversion
of TX open range distributions to step-based rates and numbers.  Details
about eligibility criteria can be found in the release documents.  The
conversion process goes like this:

1 - First, the TCT must be updated with the step-based TX rates.
     Corporate Title Code system transactions to do this were made available
     on May 18th as dataset  FTPUSRn.GET.TCSTCT.D051804 .  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 19th 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 - The final step will be to process the EDB update transactions generated
     by PPOT1580.

In addition to the conversion process, 25.5, 26.0, 26.5, 27.0, 27.5, 28.0,
28.5,
and 29.0 have been added to the list of legal step values in program PPEC051.

There are no table updates.

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, in an approach similar to
that for r1580, 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 step 3.  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.  Also, let
us know when you would like to schedule the EDB update and how you
would like to handle the costing.  Note that RX (r1580) and TX (r1581)
transactions could be processed together in the same EDB update.

   bvb