After 11 years, at least 300 cover stories, and a few thousand articles, today marks my last as a reporter at Federal Times. This afternoon, I will move over to our sister paper, Air Force Times, where I will cover Air Force personnel issues. The pay and benefits beat is now in the exceptionally skilled hands of Sean Reilly, and if you’d like, you can follow my Air Force Times coverage at my Twitter feed. I’m excited to have this opportunity to cover the military, and write about all new issues at a time of unprecedented change for our armed…
Browsing: Pay & Benefits
The Veterans Affairs Department’s outreach strategy to try get Boston area vets enrolled in benefits is targeting the town’s famous love of sports. The VA is paying $7,500 a piece to run ads in annual yearbooks for the New England Patriots and Boston’s Red Sox, Celtics and Bruins, which, by the way, need two games to win hockey’s Stanley Cup. Michael B. McNamara, outreach program manager for the VA’s New England healthcare system, said in a phone interview that the VA as been running ads in the yearbooks for two years. So far, the strategy of reaching out to vets…
The White House this week announced that, with the government facing massive budget crunches, there will be no Presidential Rank Awards handed out this year. What do you think about this development? Is it unfair and a bad sign for the overall federal workforce? Or do you think it’s a necessary step to take? Sound off below, or write me at slosey@federaltimes.com. I’ll keep your comments anonymous if you’d like.
The Office of Personnel Management today published proposed regulations on a new phased retirement option, which will let federal employees ease into retirement on a part-time basis, while still getting half a pension. You can read all about OPM’s plan here. And we’d like to hear from you on this potentially monumental change. Are you interested in phasing into retirement? If so, why? (Or if not, why not?) And if you are a manager, do you think allowing your employees to take phased retirement will help with your agency’s succession planning and knowledge retention efforts? E-mail me at slosey@federaltimes.com if…
Last year, following the disclosure that 123,000 Thrift Savings Plan accounts had been hacked, the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board launched a wide-ranging assessment of its computer system security. That “Tiger Team” task force review is now complete, but the board isn’t making the findings public. Instead, the agency is withholding the entire report on the grounds that disclosure “could reasonably be expected to risk circumvention of the law,” Amanda Haas, a Freedom of Information Act officer with the board, said in a response today to Federal Times’ FOIA request. Haas did not immediately reply to a request for more information…
With the Defense Department expected to announce a final furlough policy as early as this week, a union has asked the Merit Systems Protection Board for a heads-up on how it would rule on behalf of DoD employees who appeal decisions to make them take unpaid time off. Issuing “a pre-emptive statement of opinion” on whether those employees could win appeals would save the board “from deciding thousands of cases that would likely come,” Gregory Junemann, president of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, said in last week’s letter to MSPB chairman Susan Grundmann. A board spokesman declined…
The average federal salary increased nearly $1,000 last year — from $77,505 in fiscal 2011 to $78,467 — according to statistics posted online by the Office of Personnel Management yesterday. How can that be, you ask, when federal pay has been frozen for more than two years now? The increase highlights a point we’ve made several times — that the pay freeze isn’t actually a total pay freeze. It’s a freeze on the pay scales. Within-grade step increases — which bump many feds up to a higher level of pay every one, two or three years — were left untouched…
The now-three year pay freeze has squeezed federal employees in many ways, and student loans are just one of the many burdens thousands of feds face. One federal employee, Jessica Stroop, is hoping to draw the White House’s attention to this issue with a We the People online petition. The petition, which was launched April 2, calls for the government to reduce the balance of feds’ federal student loans by 2.2 percent for each year federal pay scales have been frozen, and for any future years of frozen pay. Stroop settled on 2.2 because it’s the average of the last…
The House Budget Committee’s report on Rep. Paul Ryan’s fiscal 2014 budget fills in a few more details on how it would affect federal employees. The budget, which the House passed March 21, would get rid of the Federal Employees Retirement System supplemental payment beginning in January 2014. That supplement is paid to FERS employees who retire before age 62, to replace the Social Security payment for which they are not yet eligible. The bill also would eliminate student loan repayments for federal employees. And its 10 percent federal workforce cut would be achieved by allowing agencies to only hire…
About 400 civilian employees will be leaving Robins Air Force Base in the latest of a series of early-out offers, according to a news release today. The package, unveiled last month, combined an early retirement option with a buyout worth up to $25,000. The 403 workers at the Georgia installation who ultimately accepted must be off the payroll by the end of next month. The base, an Air Force logistics hub about 100 miles from Atlanta, employs some 15,000 civilians, spokesman David Donato said in a phone interview. This early-out round is the fourth since 2011; a total of 680…