The federal pay system contains a number of flexibilities to address situations where federal salaries are not competitive with the private sector, a Senate hearing has been told. Federal unions, though, argued that those flexibilities would be far more helpful if agencies were more fully funded.
The hearing used as an example of recruiting and retention problems an area of North Dakota where local salaries and living costs have skyrocketed due to an oil boom, affecting the competitiveness of agencies operating there including the Air Force, CBP and others.
Officials said that while an initial thought was to seek to create a separate GS locality zone there, that process is lengthy and only held out the prospect of being partly effective. More useful, they said, was creating “special rate” pay authorities allowing for higher salaries on a targeted basis and the use of recruitment, retention and relocation incentive payments–with the result being lower turnover and greater success in hiring.
Such experiences could serve to lessen the already low interest level on Capitol Hill for undertaking a broad reform of federal pay practices, which have been long criticized as not responsive enough to either local market conditions or the individual’s performance.
Unions, though, used the opportunity to again call on Congress to lift spending limits and to pay the salary rates indicated by a 1990 law, which never has been followed, whose formula shows that federal pay on average lags far behind that of the private sector.
