So congress voted for a pay raise after the election. I would have too, if I was in there. Cutting wages for other folks, while sadly normal, is just a bit nasty and uncalled for.
Bush Cuts Pay Raises for Federal Workers, Citing National Emergency
Does this happen regularly?
My understanding is that Bush’s cutting the pay raises would be a “lame duck” issue only if Bush could not be reelected.
I don’t know how regularly it happens, but I can’t help but wonder if Bush and Congress also took a pay cut.
Yeah, this happens regularly with Republicans.
Are they true pay cuts or just media bias speak for pay a raise not as big as planned?
It is, in fact, a smaller raise.
And even at 3.1 percent, the raise exceeds the rate of inflation. Social Security recipients and Federal retirees are only getting 1.4%, based on the increase in the cost of living.
damn, I wish MY last raise was 3.1 percent…
Phouchg
Lovable Rogue
Persons wishing to make comments which are partisan and non-factual are welcome to do so in IMHO, GD or the Pit.
The reason that Federal (civilian) workers are so bothered about only getting a 3.1% raise is that all U.S. military members got a 4.1% raise for the same period.
I wish my end of year raise was going to be 3.1 percent. It’s actually going to be zip, and this despite major milestones in customer acquisition and other measures. Management said we were already well enought paid.
At least, my building manager said the owners had a lot of vacancies, so maybe my rent won’t go up this year either.
Under current law, the projected across-the-board GS pay increase will be 3.1 percent. (This percentage amount is derived under a formula linked to the Employment Cost Index published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.)
Bush did not touch this cost of living adjustment. (Thank God for small favors.)
The locality pay adjustment amounts are not yet known. The President’s Pay Agent issued a report in 2001 that shows the locality pay rates that would be payable in January 2003 under the Federal Employees Pay Comparability Act of 1990 (FEPCA). By law, the President has the authority to issue an alternative plan for locality payments. The deadline for submitting an alternative plan to Congress was November 30, 2002.
Bush’s plan is no plan, meaning there will be no locality pay increases. This is the “pay raise” that Bush cut.
There are 32 locality pay areas (including the “Rest of U.S.” area). Locality pay means specifically identified areas where the cost of living seriously affects federal employees to where one cannot afford to work for the federal government in those areas at a standard GS rate without suffering an undue hardship. Cpngrees finally recognized this and created locality pay areas. Generally speaking, this means folks in the lower GS pay scales are paid a higher base rate than identical GS levels in other areas.
For example, the GS-5, step 1 federal employee annual base rate is $22,737. An identical GS-5/1 federal employee in the New York City metro area is paid $26,200. A new locality pay adjustment raising the base rate for the NYC metro area and the 30 other specialty locality areas was killed by Bush.
According to the “Annual Report on Locality-Based Comparability Payments for the General Schedule,” the average federal employee pay disparity is 28.53% (2001). It is very difficult to find quality federal employees when they are paid 28.53% less than what they should be paid, compared to private employment in identical job skill areas.
In addition, some jobs within the federal government are even harder to fill, notably IT positions. As such, Congress also created specialty pay rates for selected job series, in this case the 2210 job series (Certain Information Technology Employees).
Using the above example, the GS-5, step 1 federal employee annual base rate is $22,737. However, a GS-5/1 IT federal employee (job series 2210) is paid $32,969 pa in the New York metro area. Bush apparently killed this increase, too.
Source: http://www.opm.gov
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I find it ironic that Bush’s decision denying the locality pay increases will hit hardest with those federal employees who will bear the brunt – do most of the work – concerning this country’s anti-terrorism efforts. In addition, Bush is also pushing an e-government initiative, government-wide. You can expect this effort will be slowed for the same reason.
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Asked, and awnsered… Thank you, Duckster
Duckster, this may be a bit off-topic, but you seem to be “up” on these issues, so…
When I was a Fed, the pay comparability issue was considered to be something of a joke, because of the way the comparison was performed. The comparison was made between someone doing a certain job in the private sector, and the position description (PD) of a Federal employee. In other words, if someone in the private sector was responsible for, say, calibrating some kind of test equipment, that person’s salary was compared to a Federal employee whose PD indicated that he was responsible for the same thing. What made it bogus was that PDs were always wildly inflated. If you went by the PD, rather than by actually examining what the person was doing, day-to-day, a file clerk in the State Department had responsibilities similar to someone in middle management in the private sector! (Hyperbole, obviously, but you get the point.)
Has that situation changed in the last few years? Are they now comparing private sector job duties to actual Federal employee job duties, rather than the inflated PDs? (I bailed in '99.)
The other problem with the pay comparability argument was that turnover in the Federal government was generally very low; large numbers of Feds weren’t leaving government service for the greener fields of the private sector. This tended to indicate that there was nothing wrong with Federal salaries. (I’m admittedly relying on memory, and can’t cite any hard numbers.)
Are the turnover rates now much higher than they used to be?
The other factor that skewed the comparison was that the job benefits in Federal service, things like sick leave, annual leave (vacation time), health insurance, life insurance, and pension benefits, usually beat the pants off anything offered in the private sector.
Sorry if this is drifting into GD territory, but I think there are still some GQ-type objective answers lurking out there!
Gah! Please forgive me for my typos.
It’s only the year-to-year increase that’s being eliminated in this case, right? Not the entire locality adjustment amount?
Correct. Getting rid of the entire locality adjustment would really be a substantial pay cut for many thousands of employees. In places like New York and San Francisco, doing so would probably propel some of the lower-grade employees under the official poverty level!
Why are they working for the government, then? Shouldn’t they either be migrating towards the private sector, or, if there are not sufficient employment opportunities therein*, be turning towards other vocations?
*If that’s the case, what supports the higher private sector salaries?
Ringo, read my earlier post about the myth of comparability.