United States

Office of Personnel Management

Office of Merit Systems Oversight and Effectiveness

Digest of Significant Classification Decisions and Opinions

September 1988

No. 12-06

Standard:	Job Grading Standard for Supervisors (WS)

Factor:	Factor I, Nature of Supervisory Responsibility

Issue:	Whether a job should be classified as Foreman or as General Foreman (but one or more grades less than that shown by the General Foreman grading table)

Although there have been several revisions of the Job Grading Standard for Federal Wage System Supervisors, the discussion in this article is still valid.

Identification of the Classification Issue

This issue arose in an Office of Personnel Management region's consideration of a classification appeal. the appeal involved a Cook Foreman who supervised two sections through five subordinate supervisors. His job exceeded Foreman criteria under Factor I of the Job Grading standard for Supervisors. However, it fell short of General Foreman criteria. Page 13 of the standard shows that when a General Foreman job has less than the full range of General Foreman responsibility, it should be classified as General Foreman but one or more grades below that shown by the General Foreman grading table. Thus, the issue was whether the job should be classified as Foreman, or as General Foreman but one or more grades less than that shown by the grading table.

Resolution

Page 3 of the standard shows that to decide whether a job should be evaluated at the Foreman or General Foreman level, one should select the range of supervisory responsibility that better fits the job overall.

The appellant's job met Foreman criteria in most respects. Nonetheless, it exceeded those criteria in a few respects, most notably in that it involved supervision of subordinate supervisors. However, pages 3 and 4 of the standard indicate that a job may be properly classified as Foreman even if it involve supervision of such supervisors.

The job met General Foreman criteria in some respects. However, on balance it fell substantially short of the General Foreman criteria for a number of reasons, including the following:

1.	All work directed by the appellant was covered by just two very closely related occupations: cooking and food service working. For this reason among others, he did not direct as wide a variety of work operations or functions as do General Foremen.

2.	He directed two units, not several as do General Foremen.

3.	He planned and schedule work assignments on a long-range basis, as do General Foremen. However, these plans and schedules fell short of General Foreman criteria in that they were not for accomplishment by several units. Also, they were simple and standardized, being nearly identical to the appellant's previous long-range plans and schedules.

4.	The appellant did not, to the extent typical of General Foremen, plan work assignments considering trades or other occupations involved.

5.	He did not serve as a management representative at formal hearings, meetings, and negotiations involving labor-management relations on a regular and recurring basis.

6.	Pages 2 and 3 of the standard describe assumptions made in writing the standard. These pages indicate that General Foremen typically supervise a number of different work operations or functions, direct a number of different kinds of skills and occupations, coordinate and control fairly varied and dispersed work operations, and encounter frequent changes in the variety, volume, or kind of work supervised, and in the deadlines for completing work. The appellant's job did not meet these conditions.

Based on the above analysis, the Office of Personnel Management concluded that the appellant's job over-all matched the Foreman range of responsibility better than the General Foreman range. It was, therefore, evaluated at the Foreman level.