Demonstration Project at USDA Planned

The Agriculture Department’s Food Safety Inspection Service has proposed to conduct a personnel demonstration project that, like the others already ongoing, would feature a revised compensation and pay system including career paths, pay banding and pay for performance. The planned five-year project would involve some 2,800 employees, all of them outside union bargaining units. It would differ somewhat from many other demo projects, however, in that about a third of affected employees have working conditions that USDA termed “substantially different from other white-collar workers,” for example performing shift-oriented work that involve substantial amounts of regularly scheduled and intermittent overtime. A notice in the May 9 Federal Register contains details, including arrangements for a public hearing that will be needed before implementation could begin, likely many months off.