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About Salaries

​About Salaries

Salary Ranges and Merit Salary Adjustments 

All civil service classes have salary ranges with minimum and maximum rates.

 

Typically, agencies appoint employees to the minimum rate of the salary range for the class. Special provisions for appointments above the minimum exist to meet special recruitment needs and to accommodate employees who transfer into a class from another civil service class and are already receiving salaries above the minimum.
 
After each 12 months of satisfactory performance, employees receive a 5 percent merit salary adjustment until they reach the maximum salary for the class.
 
Supervisors' and managers' salary increases are subject to certification based upon annual performance appraisals of successful or better performance. This applies to both across-the-board general salary increases as well as MSAs. Managers and supervisors who are not rated successful or better do not receive salary increases above the minimum salary range for their class until such time that their performance is certified as successful.

Internal Salary Relationships​

CalHR may periodically adjust the salary of a class because of changing duties.
 
When establishing a salary for a new class or adjusting the salary of an existing class, CalHR pays particular attention to the salaries of similar civil service classes. If a class salary is too low in comparison with related classes, agencies will have difficulty recruiting qualified personnel. If a salary is too high, the primary recruitment pool will be other civil service classes, creating recruitment and retention problems for those classes.
 
While it's not always possible, CalHR tries to group class salaries with similar classes at the same level of responsibility. For example, the salary of a journey-level safety engineer is close to the salary of the journey-level civil and bridge engineers. This is known as the horizontal salary relationship.
 
CalHR also tries to maintain appropriate salary differentials between classes within the same career pattern. For example, the maximum salary for a first-line supervisor is generally 10 percent above the maximum salary for the full journey-level class it supervises. This is known as the vertical salary relationship.
 
Because CalHR must consider both horizontal and vertical relationships, a seemingly simple request to adjust a class salary may have fiscal impact far beyond the requested class. Consequently, CalHR cannot always accommodate agency requests with regard to class salaries.

Premium Pay

Premium pay differentials exist for a variety of reasons. Currently, there are differentials for
 
  • special skills or abilities - for example flight pay, bilingual pay, avalanche control pay, etc.
  • night or evening shifts
  • recruitment and/or retention at specific locations
  • professional competency
  • sales bonuses
  • working out of state
  • achieving or maintaining physical fitness standards.
 
An employee's class, assignment, and collective bargaining agreement determine eligibility to receive a pay differential. Therefore, not all employees in a class or agency will necessarily be eligible for a specific differential.
 
Collective bargaining units negotiate pay differentials for represented classes. CalHR establishes pay differentials for classes excluded from bargaining when warranted.

Overtime Pay

State policy generally requires that employees work 8-hour days and 40-hour weeks. State policy allows some exceptions so as to meet the needs of the different State departments.
 
State policy is to avoid overtime work whenever possible. However, this policy does not prevent overtime where it is necessary to carry on State business during a peak work period or when there is a shortage of qualified employees.
 
The Federal Fair Labor Standards Act regulates overtime compensation for most State employees. Generally, FLSA requires one and one-half cash or compensating time off for each overtime hour worked for those employees covered by the Act. Professional, supervisory, and managerial employees exempt from FLSA coverage receive no overtime compensation.
  Updated: 5/22/2012
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