Many federal employees carry misconceptions about the special rates case, possibly because the details have blurred during the 20 years the case has been bouncing around the federal courts. Many special rate employees-white-collar employees who get extra pay for being in hard-to-fill positions-believe the settlement applies to everyone in that category, past or present. The settlement in fact applies only to those under special rates in the 1982-1988 period who had raises improperly capped or denied under a policy in effect during that time. Those who got the full general federal pay raises in that period in addition to their special rate adjustments are not due any back pay. It’s estimated that the class of eligible individuals is around 190,000, some 40,000 of whom are believed to be retired and many others either separated or deceased. The National Treasury Employees Union, which has been pushing the case for all these years, estimates that in most cases the payments will range up to $3,000, but in some cases involving highly paid employees in engineering and certain other occupations the payments could be up to 10 times that much, counting interest.