For about 640,000 federal employees at agencies like the Homeland Security and Treasury departments, the paper pay stub will soon be a thing of the past. White House budget director Peter Orszag yesterday announced that the Agriculture Department’s National Finance Center is going to stop issuing paper pay stubs as part of an effort to save about $4 million in printing and mailing costs per year. Until now, employees have had to opt out of receiving paper stubs, but only about 192,000 people chose to do so. Under the new plan, all employees will receive electronic pay statements by default…
Browsing: Pay & Benefits
According to the Pay Agent — a top-level interagency council that advises the president on federal pay policy matters — federal employees earn anywhere between 27% and 69% less than their non-federal counterparts, depending on where they work. Each year, these pay gap figures, which are derived from Bureau of Labor Statistics surveys, are used to calculate the locality pay increases given to federal employees. But other studies indicate those pay gap figures are off the mark and that any pay gap is in favor of feds. This week, compensation expert Howard Risher writes in Federal Times that, in fact,…
The federal government is borrowing too much and costs too much to run. If it were a private company, it would have cut employee salaries a long time ago to make ends meet, say two economists in a column for Forbes magazine. And that’s what the federal government needs to do to show it’s serious about fiscal responsibility and reducing the deficit, write economists Robert Stein and Brian Wesbury. If private companies operated like the federal government, creditors and analysts would have serious concerns about the companies’ fiscal health and reconsider doing business with them, they write. And with unemployment…
In addition to calling for a freeze on non-security discretionary spending, the White House also plans to freeze the pay and suspend the bonuses of more than 1,200 political appointees. Obama will issue a directive in the next few days suspending the bonuses, according to administration officials. That directive will cover more than 3,000 appointees. And his budget request, scheduled for release on Feb. 1, will propose a pay freeze for top political appointees — a move which would affect 1,200 people, including White House officials, department heads and ambassadors (except for career foreign service officers serving as ambassadors). The…
The White House last night announced its intention to nominate two new members to the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board, which oversees the Thrift Savings Plan: Dana Bilyeu will replace current board member Thomas Fink. Bilyeu has been executive officer of Nevada’s Public Employees’ Retirement System for more than six years, where she oversees plan funding analysis, investment oversight, operational and strategic planning, and other fiduciary and governance issues. She also is currently a member of the Social Security Advisory Board. Michael Kennedy will replace current board member Gordon Whiting. Kennedy, a former investment manager, is now a senior client partner…
The Washington Post is reporting that the White House and unions have reached a tentative deal on the excise tax on so-called “Cadillac” health care plans: Lawmakers said the agreement would raise the cost of unusually generous health policies and ignore secondary coverage, such as vision and dental plans. Health plans negotiated as part of collective-bargaining agreements would be exempt for two years after the 2013 effective date, giving labor leaders time to negotiate new contracts.
The libertarian Reason Magazine has a — shall we say — provocative article online, entitled “Class War: How public servants become our masters.” It raises some valid points about problems associated with public-sector employment: The impending “pension bomb,” for example, is a serious threat to the finances of many state and local governments. But I think the author, Steven Greenhut, makes a couple of questionable propositions about the federal government.
Federal employees already know they’re getting a 2 percent overall pay increase for 2010, but the actual raise each employee receives varies widely depending on where they work. To help employees determine their 2010 salaries, the Office of Personnel Management has posted updated pay charts for employees in the General Schedule, Senior Executive Service and other pay systems. We here at Fedline are glad to pass them along, but you know the saying: Don’t kill the messenger.
President Barack Obama signed a 3.4 percent pay raise for service members into law Monday, making 2010 one of a handful of recent years where civil servants and members of the military won’t receive the same raises. A spending omnibus signed recently by Obama gives federal employees a 2 percent raise. Obama said earlier this year that the economy made giving civilian employees the same raises as the military prohibitive. Unions have pledged to return pay parity in 2011. The military raise was included in the fiscal 2010 Defense appropriations bill, HR 3326.
President Barack Obama signed into law a 1.5 percent pay raise and an average 05. percent locality pay increase for federal civilian employees on Dec. 16. The raise takes effect January 1, 2010. The pay raise is included in a fiscal 2010 spending omnibus which funds the following agencies: Commerce, Education, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Justice, Labor, State, Transportation and Veterans Affairs departments. The only appropriations bill not signed into law is Defense, which the Senate may pass today. The House passed it Dec. 16.