The American Federation of Government Employees wasted no time in firing back at the Defense Business Board task group’s final report on the National Security Personnel System, and its recommendation to rebuild — but not abolish — the controversial system. In a letter sent to the task group less than an hour after the report was posted online, AFGE President John Gage said the decision to drastically reform NSPS left the union “perplexed, angered and frustrated:” The recommendation to keep NSPS is illogical and does not flow from your findings. The task group has miscalculated the intensity of hatred toward…
Browsing: Pay & Benefits
Cato’s Chris Edwards thinks federal employees are overpaid (h/t Alyssa Rosenberg at GovExec’s blog): In 2008, the average wage for 1.9 million federal civilian workers was $79,197, which compared to an average $49,935 for the nation’s 108 million private sector workers (measured in full-time equivalents). The figure shows that the federal pay advantage (the gap between the lines) is steadily increasing. This is a pretty useless comparison. 66 percent of federal employees are in higher-paid “management, business, and financial” or “professional” jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Only about 36 percent of private sector employees are in those…
The Office of Personnel Management just released guidance on the upcoming open season for choosing next year’s plans under the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program. Federal employees will be able to select health, dental and vision insurance plans and enroll in a Flexible Spending Account between Nov. 9 and Dec. 14. Anyone already enrolled in a health, dental or vision plan will stay enrolled in their current plan unless they choose to change or cancel it. But Flexible Spending Accounts don’t carry over from one year to another — enrollees must set up an account again if they want to keep directing pretax…
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Edolphus Towns said in a letter yesterday that the health care bill now before Congress would require “some administrative and a small number of benefits-related adjustments” to some plans under the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program. Those changes would be necessary to make sure all FEHBP plans meet the government’s standards of a “qualified health benefits plan,” Towns said in his letter to Ranking Republican Darrell Issa. The health care bill, HR 3200, would require all citizens to have a minimum level of insurance coverage through a qualified health benefits plan or other form of…
From Steve Losey at the Pentagon: The National Security Personnel System Task Force is about to recommend the Defense Department continue with NSPS with some major revisions, such as improved communications between managers and employees and improved transparency for the pay pool process. Check back with FederalTimes.com later today for Steve’s full report on the task force’s NSPS recommendations.
Have you ever wondered how your salary stacks up to the folks with the high-powered White House jobs? Well, wonder no more. Just click here. The White House posted a searchable form of its annual salary report to Congress yesterday. Predictably, the big-name power players like Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, Senior Adviser David Axelrod, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, and speechwriter Jonathan Favreau all make six figures:Â $172,200 to be precise, or last year’s maximum salary for senior executives. The 2009 maximum for senior executives is $177,000.
The House approved a measure tonight that would allow federal employees under the Federal Employees Retirement System to count their unused sick leave toward their retirement pension calculations. The measure could bring the newer FERS system in line with the Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS), which always allowed that calculation. The Disabled Military Retiree Relief Act of 2009, H.R. 2990, passed in a 404-0 vote. It now moves to the Senate, which stripped similar provisions from a bill giving the Food and Drug Administration the authority to regulate tobacco. In addition, to allowing FERS employees count sick their unused leave toward…
President Barack Obama today signed the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, which contains several major overhauls to the government’s Thrift Savings Plan retirement program. The TSP overhaul will: Create a Roth option, which will allow TSP participants to pay taxes on money they invest in the program and make tax-free withdrawals in retirement years later. The Roth option is expected to mostly benefit military service members. Automatically enroll all new civilian federal employees in the TSP’s G Fund. Military service members will not be automatically enrolled. Allow new enrollees to receive automatic matching contributions from their agency right…
Federal Times has just released our first online National Security Personnel System chart. We’ve created an exclusive, interactive program to let you, the reader, conduct the same kind of analyses we used as the basis for our June 8 cover story, Race still a factor in DoD pay raises. You can drill down to any combination of demographic criteria to find the average rating, pay raise, bonus and total payout for different groups. Wondering how male Asian employees under 40 years of age fared under NSPS? How about Hispanic Army employees in Oklahoma? Pick and choose and our program will…
The White House has released a fact sheet outlining the benefits it will grant to same-sex domestic partners of gay and lesbian federal employees today: Domestic partners of federal employees can be added to the long-term care insurance program. Federal employees will be allowed to use sick leave to care for domestic partners and their non-biological, non-adopted children. The memo will also outline benefits for partners of State Department Foreign Service officers, who for the first time will: Be able to use medical facilities at posts abroad. Be medically evacuated from posts abroad. Be counted when State measures a Foreign…