Pay raise: Not if or when, but how much!

This year, many of the old demons that haunted them simply won’t be around. Even better, the question isn’t whether there will be a January pay raise, but rather how much that 2022 hike will be. The only question — unless the nation is plunged into a recession or another national emergency — is how much the increase will be. President Biden has proposed 2.7%, whereas some congressional Democrats say they won’t settle for less than 3.2%. Either way, that is good news for workers who in recent times were lucky to get 1%. And who suffered through several years without a pay raise proposed by a Democratic administration during the Great Recession.

So what else is coming up? What about the future of work-at-home programs? Before the pandemic, the Trump administration was dialing them down. Now a majority of feds in many agencies have had 12-to-14 months of working from home. How about proposals to beef up the staff at the IRS and other agencies that have been intentionally downsized in the past? What about those round up the usual suspects proposals to cut current retirement benefits and reduce future monthly annuities? So what are these threats? How serious are they and do they still have a political fan base?

Let’s ask an expert like Greg Stanford of the Federal Managers Association (FMA). He watches Capitol Hill for FMA and has been to — and survived — numerous political rodeos. Greg will be my guest on today’s episode of Your Turn