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At its latest meeting, the Federal Salary Council made no mention of potential changes in how federal vs. non-federal salaries are compared raised during the Trump administration—changes that employee unions decried as designed to justify smaller pay raises and which now likely are dead for the duration of the Biden administration.
The annual announcement of how far federal employees on average are behind in pay—now 22.47 percent—always stirs controversy even though the number is based on procedures required in the 1990 federal pay law creating the GS locality pay system, using BLS data. Other studies have concluded an advantage for federal employees in that range or more, or something in between.
Political points of view largely determine how the salary comparisons are viewed in general, a pattern than also holds true within the council itself, which has a majority of seats reserved for federal unions but also has three members appointed by the White House.
The three Trump administration appointees had raised a series of options for calculating the pay gap, including two potential ways of adding in factors such as turnover, conducting a study modeled on the military’s quadrennial reviews of compensation, or taking the value of benefits into account. The union representatives who hold the majority of seats blocked those moves within the council but the Trump appointees continued to advocate for them, raising the prospect of changing the law to override the union opposition.
No such changes in law were enacted during those years, though, and the latest salary study—written with three Biden administration appointees now in place—did not recognize even that such ideas had been proposed.
Instead, the report recommended—and the council approved—several technical changes in how boundaries of the GS locality areas are drawn—which had been under consideration but on which no action had been taken during the Trump administration. Each of those changes would move more employees from the lowest-paid “rest of the U.S.” locality into higher-paying localities.
The result would be an immediate pay raise for the roughly 33,000 affected employees—in some cases substantial boosts, since some would be moved into locality areas with the highest pay rates, such as San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose, Washington-Baltimore and Boston.
The council’s recommendations are subject to review and approval by the higher-level President’s Pay Agent, but that group also consists only of Biden administration-backed officials, the heads of OPM, OMB and Labor.
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See also,
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OMB Previews Potential Changes in Pay, Benefits Law
The Process of Retiring – OPM’s Benefits Determination Process
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