Death Knell for 1990 Pay Law?

In what could sound the death knell for the 1990 Federal Employees Pay Comparability Act-the law that was supposed to have virtually closed the indicated pay gap with private industry by now-the Bush administration’s proposed January 2004 federal pay raise is linked to general inflation, not to the employment cost index measure specified under the act. The administration’s request for 2 percent in its fiscal 2004 budget proposal, while no surprise, effectively constitutes an abandonment of the portion of the 1990 law that had been followed, at least in a general way, since that law was passed. That law crafted a two-part raise formula: ECI-linked raises to generally keep federal salaries apace with private sector wage growth plus locality pay designed to close the indicated pay gap.