Fedweek

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The Trump administration’s appointees to the Federal Salary Council have questioned that group’s annual conclusions that federal employees on average are about a third behind comparable private sector positions.

In an unusual statement attached to the group’s annual report, the three said that the council “is in danger of becoming largely irrelevant, at least when it comes to its original raison d’être; that is, to make recommendations to the President’s Pay Agent on the broader questions of pay comparability between federal and non-federal employers.

“For far too long, the Council has not addressed whether its annual estimate of the so-called “pay gap”—that single number that we proffer every year—truly represents the federal government’s ability to compete in today’s hypercompetitive talent market…across all locales, grade levels, and occupations. And that same “suspect” approach is used to estimate local “pay gaps” that may or may not be real…but that have very real consequences for those federal employees potentially affected by them,” they wrote.

The statement mirrors positions those three members took at two meetings of the group last year. At the second, they raised options for changing the methods used in arriving at the pay gap figure—including a measure of “total compensation” taking the value of benefits into account as well as pay—but were voted down by the more numerous representatives from federal employee unions.

In a separate statement with the annual report, the three added details to those options and pointed out that in a strong job market, federal employee attrition “is as low as it has ever been. And while some of that low attrition can certainly (and gratifyingly) be attributed to the “public service motivation” of those employees, something still does not compute.”

“That paradox casts a harsh light on the double-digit pay gap, and it is no wonder then that it has largely been ignored by the President’s Pay Agent and the relevant committees in the Congress…not just of this administration and this Congress, but of every one that has preceded them, going all the way back to the initial passage of the Federal Employee Pay Comparability Act of 1990. Something is wrong here, and we three members of the Council want to get to the bottom of it,” they wrote.

The three are Ronald Sanders, a long-time federal personnel official now a college professor; Jill Nelson, who heads a separate council on blue-collar pay; and Katja Bullock, an official with the White House personnel office.

The report doesn’t include a reply from the union members although it does include their statement at last fall’s meeting opposing the options, especially adopting a total compensation approach, as a move to hold down pay and potentially cut the value of federal employee benefits.

Separately, as part of the President’s Management Agenda the administration is conducting a study of a total compensation approach but that study is not expected to be completed until early next year and no recommendations are expected until late next summer.