2/11/03: No Performance Pay For The Big Boss

Most members of the government’s elite Senior Executive Service would not be eligible for the performance-based pay raises the Bush administration will propose for other white collar civil servants, according to the Senior Executive Association. SEA represents most of the top career corps.

Under the performance pay system, which must be approved by Congress before any of it can take place, feds next January would each get a flat 2 percent raise. They would be eligible for performance increases proposed by supervisors, from their agencies’ share of the $500 performance pay fund that would be setup. Workers would still get longevity raises, each worth 3 percent, based on time in grade and satisfactory performance.

But big bosses, members of the SES and related executive services in other agencies, would have their pay set within a pay band which would range from around $114,000 to $154,700 including locality pay. Base pay for the SES would be $102,000 to $142,500 before locality pay is figured in.

SES members would not get additional raises unless the ceiling on total pay including both base and locality is lifted, or the execs move up in their pay band.

For the record about 98 percent of rank-and-file federal workers are rated “satisfactory” or better each year, qualifying them for the 3 percent within-grade (longevity) raises every one, two or three years. In 2001, 83 percent of all SES members got the highest rating possible.

For details on the impact of the new pay proposal on the SES click here.

For a rundown on how the performance-based pay system would work for rank-and-file feds, click here.

SPECIAL RATES

A reader asks if she will get her special rate back paycheck from the government in time to help with Christmas shopping. It depends on which Christmas she’s talking about. She may not get it in time for Christmas 2003. Here’s the deal:

The government has agreed that it owes lots of people including engineers, scientists, D.C. clericals and others money for raises denied them between fiscal 1982-88. All the employees were in special rate jobs which, at the time, paid anywhere from 3 to 30 percent more than the regular salary for their grades. Many were denied some or all of the regular January raises that went to feds who were NOT special raters. The National Treasury Employees Union won a decade long legal fight and the government has agreed to pay.

There are 212,000 people in the “class” who are eligible for the $173.5 million in back pay. Not all of them will get it, and people will get different amounts, ranging from $1,000 to $50,000, depending on their grade and job at the time and how much they were short-changed by Uncle Sam.

But it’s likely to be October, at the earliest, before any of the checks are put in the mail. For more on how the process works click here.

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