US Embassy, Kiev Ukraine 2022: Expiring pay authority would have translated into about $21,000 on a yearly basis in lost pay. Image: Fire-fly/Shutterstock.com
The budget measure that extended federal agency spending authority through December 20 contains a provision to temporarily avoid a pay cut that many foreign service employees working overseas would have experienced starting September 30, according to the American Foreign Service Association.
That threat arose because an allowance worth 22 percent of pay called overseas comparability pay, or OCP, was set to expire. The allowance is equivalent to the GS locality pay rate in the Washington, D.C. area, designed to eliminate what otherwise would be a disparity between those stationed in that area and those stationed abroad.
That would have translated into a loss of an average of about $21,000 on a yearly basis, affecting employees in grades FS-01 through -09 of the State Department; the U.S. Agency for International Development; the Foreign Commercial Service; the Foreign Agricultural Service; the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service; and the U.S. Agency for Global Media.
The organization said that it “anticipates” that the annual DoD authorization bill—which has passed each year for decades—which Congress will take up after the elections will contain a longer extension, potentially through fiscal 2026. Failing that, AFSA said it is “confident” that an extension will be included in some other measure, such as a general agency funding bill.
“While this immediate crisis has been averted, AFSA remains committed to ensuring a lasting solution to OCP that guarantees equitable compensation permanently for our overseas Foreign Service members,” the AFSA said.
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