A provision in the catchall spending bill for fiscal 2004 (HR-2673) for agencies whose regular appropriations haven’t been enacted could change the way raises for blue-collar federal employees are set. While wage grade employees have their own locality pay system separate from the general schedule locality system, in recent years the average GS raise has acted as a cap for wage grade employees-that is, they have gotten the lower of the GS average amount or the amount indicated by their local wage studies. The measure would change that procedure, effective in the current fiscal year-wage grade employees get raises at varying times of the year–so that wage grade employees would get the same raise as GS employees in the GS locality where they work. The catchall bill specifies a 4.1 percent GS raise for January 2004, although a default raise of 2 percent in January might kick in, probably to be superseded later. For technical reasons the GS “average” raise figure for the blue-collar pay cap purpose works out to be slightly higher than the stated GS number. A 4.1 percent amount would translate into GS raises varying by locality from 3.89 to 5.34 percent.