Federal pay likely to be next hot topic for Congress

'Federal Feedback' by Michael Kole

Date published: 9/27/2009

THE WAY things are shaping up, federal pay will be the next hot topic that will require intense debate in Congress.

President Obama has already publicly voiced his opinion on the matter by presenting to Congress recently a letter that indicated his preference for the 2010 federal pay raise.

Although the letter is not considered to be the definitive word on where the raise will end up, the president did stick to his original figure of a 2 percent raise for federal employees.

As has been the case in past administrations, this letter serves pretty much as the "default" raise number. By that I mean if Congress cannot come up with a bigger or even smaller raise number, the 2 percent will be added to the budget for the 2010 fiscal year.

The other figures being tossed around have been a 2.9 percent raise for federal employees in the Senate version of the government spending bill, and nobody has given up on pay parity tied to a 3.4 percent increase talked about for military members under the Defense authorization bill.

The president thinks the tough economic times require a more conservative approach to the 2010 raise, but most employees feel pretty comfortable with the work that has been put in and feel the larger raise would be money well spent.

Many people point to a recent study on the federal pay gap with private industry and feel that federal salaries may be getting too high. However, I don't believe those studies accurately tell the real story.

The federal sector does not have the vast number of low-paying jobs that private industry has, and this can dramatically drag down the pay charts. Additionally, much of the millions private-sector executives get as salary is tied to stock options and other smoke-and-mirrors tricks that mask the actual cash salary the executive is earning. This again throws off the numbers when comparing federal wages with the private sector.

In other news around the federal water cooler, the United States Postal Service has decided to offer an incentive for some employees to resign or retire early.

This affects USPS employees who work in mail processing facilities, not letter carriers; however, the Postal Service does expect that as many as 30,000 employees may take advantage of the offer.

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Date published: 9/27/2009