Pay Clusters Planned

DHS anticipates that under its new job classification system, the 15 general schedule grades will be replaced by perhaps a dozen occupational “clusters”-such as law enforcement, administrative jobs, and intelligence analysts. Within each cluster, there would most commonly be four pay bands, representing entry level, full performance, senior expert and first level supervisory, with a separate arrangement for second and third level supervisors. Employees could be moved up in salary within a band more easily than under the current GS grading system, but promotion to another band would require assessment and/or competition. Employees would not lose salary upon being shifted into the new system, and in many cases they would see a small raise because the agency would “buy out” the time they have accumulated toward a within-grade raise under the current system.