The Senate Armed Services Committee’s version of the fiscal 2025 National Defense Authorization Act last week showed support for a 2% raise for DoD civilian workers and a 4.5% raise for military members. In a vote of 22-3 on June 13, committee lawmakers advanced the 2025 NDAA to the full Senate for consideration. The House passed its version of the NDAA last week.

Although the NDAA’s provisions only apply to Defense Department employees, both civilian DoD workers and the rest of the civilian federal workforce on the General Schedule would see the same percentage added to their paychecks, if the raise is enacted.

In House appropriations legislation, committee lawmakers remained silent on the topic of the federal pay raise, indicating a likely alignment with the president’s raise proposal. The GOP-led committee advanced legislation for a fiscal 2025 spending package last week along party lines. The Senate Appropriations Committee has not yet released its versions of fiscal 2025 spending legislation.

President Joe Biden’s request of a 2% pay raise for most civilian federal employees on the General Schedule, if enacted, would be the smallest annual raise for feds since Biden took office. The 2% proposal comes in contrast to the 5.2% federal pay raise for 2024, which was the largest raise for feds since the Carter administration.

Biden’s initial raise proposal in March, contained in the fiscal 2025 budget request, did not indicate a breakdown between base pay and locality pay. But in most years, presidents typically set aside 0.5% for locality pay and leave the remainder for the across-the-board raise.

For the federal pay raise, nothing is set in stone until Biden signs an executive order to enact it, which usually happens in December. Ahead of that finalization, federal unions and other employee organizations have spoken out in favor of a larger pay raise for feds in 2025, calling for a 7.4% boost rather than the 2% proposal.

Legislation titled the FAIR Act, if enacted, would offer that large of a raise to feds next year. Unions including the National Treasury Employees Union have endorsed the bill, which lawmakers first introduced in January.

“NTEU continues the fight to pass the FAIR Act,” NTEU wrote in a blog post Tuesday. “Such an investment in the federal workforce would help close the significant pay gap between federal employee and private sector pay and help the federal government compete with the private sector for talented employees.”

But many agencies are already trying to figure out how to incorporate the larger 5.2% raise into their budgets for 2024. Some agencies’ budgets this fiscal year remained relatively stagnant, while other costs, such as federal employees’ paychecks, have continued to rise.

The next step in the process toward finalizing the federal pay raise will likely come later this summer. To avoid defaulting to the Federal Employees Pay Comparability Act (FEPCA), Biden will have to issue an alternative pay plan by the end of August.

Federal employees currently earn about 27.54% less in wages than those in the private sector with similar occupations, according to the Federal Salary Council. Although FEPCA allows for a large enough annual federal pay raise to bring the federal-private sector wage gap down to 5%, no president since 1994 has incorporated the fully authorized amount.

Decades of deviation from FEPCA have caused distortion of federal pay in multiple ways. It would now cost an estimated $22 billion to bring General Schedule salaries in line with the private sector.

Any potential changes in Congress that might break away from the current pay plans could still take place this fall ahead of an executive order in December.

The post Proposed 2% federal pay raise gets support in 2025 defense authorization bill first appeared on Federal News Network.

For many people, thinking about retirement, is axiomatic. Pay off that mortgage on the house. It might be wise to think through this strategy a little more carefully. For why, the Federal Drive with Tom Temin spoke with private wealth advisor Thiago Glieger of RMG Advisors.

Interview Transcript: 

Thiago Glieger Yeah. I think it’s one of those things that with most retirement planning, with most financial planning, what seems to be good for one family isn’t always the best thing for another family. And it’s kind of against the grain, because in medicine we think about, there’s a certain symptom that’s met with a specific treatment or medication or whatever. But in financial planning, we start to recognize it doesn’t quite work that way. So you have to be careful and look at your own circumstance very objectively. But what doesn’t help is the fact that all these pundits are often talking about, you can’t have any debt to your name. Liability is bad, bad, bad, bad. You need to pay off your mortgage before you head into retirement. And so people start to have this ingrained idea that they can’t retire until they do so, or going into retirement with a mortgage is a really bad thing.

Tom Temin But a mortgage has characteristics, and homeownership have characteristics that are different from other kinds of debt. And that’s the crux.

Thiago Glieger Yeah. I very loosely categorize debt into two different categories, one being good debt and then bad debt. Bad debt is that little plastic card everyone has and overuses. If you’re carrying debt on that, that’s not good. Good debt, you can use leverage to have your money grow it for your retirement, continue to allow it to support you, but you also get to have something like a house and live in it. And that house gets to appreciate in value. There are some tax properties that may be beneficial for you about having a mortgage. So it can be done correctly.

Tom Temin Because yes, the mortgage interest is deductible still under federal tax law. And so if you lose that you could have a greater tax liability from whatever income you have when you do retire.

Thiago Glieger That’s right. And I think a lot of people kind of forgot about the deductibility of the mortgage interest because standard deduction amounts have been so high. So unless they’re itemizing, they may not be getting that benefit. But I have to remind people that in two years, the law is set to go back to the original rule, where again, deductions will go down. And unless they change the law, that could be a very beneficial benefit for people again.

Tom Temin And people sometimes think, well, I’ll pay off the house, realize the appreciation. And there’s a pretty hefty capital gains avoidance that you have. Most normal people with normal houses will be under that limit and then buy a condo and then still have space I want and live rent free. Well, not so fast there either.

Thiago Glieger Right. And you always have to think about what are you trading? Or that liquidity. That paying off the full mortgage or just paying cash for another property and just having no mortgage at all, like something for a condo, for instance, you’re trading that liquid capital for illiquidity in real estate, as well as some reduced expenses, because then you don’t have that mortgage. But if you think about also what is the composition of a mortgage, it’s not entirely just the loan and the interest payment that you have. There’s really four parts to it. We call that Principal Interest Taxes and Insurance (PITI). So in even in your case when you’re describing a condo, somebody may not have a mortgage payment but you’re going to have HOA fees, you’re going to have condominium fees, you’re going to have the taxes in the insurance that you still owe each month.

Tom Temin Right. And sometimes a condo will come to you and say, guess what, we need a new roof. It’s $2 million, but we only have $500,000 in escrow for the roof. So everybody gets assessed up to up $10,000 out of nowhere to make sure the place doesn’t fall apart.

Thiago Glieger And that number is not out of the ordinary. I had a client just a few months ago come to us for $15,000 out of nowhere because, again, it was that situation where they needed to replace everything throughout the whole building. And it was a huge assessment.

Tom Temin Right. And especially in the age after the collapse of that condo in Florida, nobody wants to take a chance with a condo building if it’s more than two-storey high.

Thiago Glieger That’s right.

Tom Temin We’re speaking with Thiago Glieger, wealth advisor with RMG Advisors of Rockville, Maryland. So let’s presume then, that someone nevertheless wants to pay off their mortgage. What’s a good strategy for doing it? Where do you get the money to do it?

Thiago Glieger There’s a couple of questions I would want people to see themselves asking. And really the first is, if I do this, what are going to be the tax implications? If I’m going to take a large lump sum payment from my retirement accounts, that’s taxable like salary, just like ordinary income. And so the additional question here is beyond just the tax cost, how much potential future growth did you also cost yourself by not having this money anymore? Does this create any kind of risk in later retirement, because it’s a huge chunk of money that you’re not paying. So then other people may look at non retirement accounts like individual accounts, brokerage, joint, trusts. That comes with capital gains. So you have more control, and it is less taxes in ordinary income. And then sometimes people will say, well, you know what, this is what we have the Roth for. The Roth is totally tax free. It’s for surprise bills like this or something we can use, and we don’t have to worry about the tax. I don’t like people using the Roth for something like this, because the Roth is where you get all of your tax free growth. I’d like to see people using the Roth as kind of their growth vehicle for the future, so taking it and dumping it into a house may not be the best thing, but that’s usually the three options that people have.

Tom Temin Or you could win the lottery, I suppose. And then it doesn’t matter what happens. But if you do, then retain your house and the mortgage payments. If you can afford them, the question is if you can afford them before you retire, can you afford them after you retire that PITI payment? And that’s really the analysis you have to do, because it might be that you can totally handle it.

Thiago Glieger That’s right, exactly. And that’s the point here is I think a lot of people think they just can’t have a mortgage payment because their FERS and Social Security is not making up all of the income that they have from their salary. So they think, oh, well, our income is going down, so we must reduce our expenses. And that may not necessarily be true. If you’ve been a good saver throughout your career, then you might be sitting on a substantial chunk of change that you can use to continue to grow and invest for yourself. It continues to generate cash flow so you can keep making those mortgage payments, because you’re still generating a retirement paycheck at this point, it’s just not coming from the government.

Tom Temin I guess people might have the idea, well, we can partially pay it off with a chunk of the Roth or a chunk of the rainy day savings we have. But on the other hand, if you do that, you don’t really change your PITI payment, because the bank, the way they’ve rigged the mortgage system, pay all this interest until you pay off the principal.

Thiago Glieger And that’s why people really look to do a full payment, because you’re only free and clear of those interest payments. Once you clear that liability completely. And again, the challenge in doing these lump sum payments is that it affects something called your adjusted gross income. And not only do you pay higher taxes, potentially in that first year, you may have pushed yourself into a higher tax bracket for your first pension. So now there’s a bigger bite coming out of your annuity as well. This can also impact capital gains taxes. It could impact your Medicare Part B premiums. There’s a whole lot of other elements of a retirement plan that this one single move can have an impact negatively on. So you really have to be careful.

Tom Temin Most of the calculators online, where you plug in numbers to calculate whether you can retire or not or what your costs will be. There’s a lot they leave out, and one of the things they don’t have is tax. Because tax varies so widely by location, state you’re in municipality you’re in. This property taxes vary and then state taxes etc., etc.. Are there any sources of information to model what your taxes might look like? If I stay in my house, I pay this, that and the other for mortgage. Now here’s my income. That type of tax analysis.

Thiago Glieger Yeah. And the challenge Tom is needing to know a little bit about how the tax structure works. And I always encourage people, if you want to do some of this work, you can actually just go to the IRS website and look up the tax brackets and say, okay, if I generate this much in ordinary income, what is considered my marginal tax bracket, that’s the rate at which my next dollar is going to be taxed at. And this helps me to figure out if I take a lump sum from my TSP. That’s what my tax picture is going to look like. And then thinking about, all right, well, if I do this for next year, is that a year that’s going to be better for me because maybe I’m not working. Or do I want to do it this year because I have extra cash flow to be able to still contribute to the TSP, even on taking money out. So there’s some modeling that can be done. But you’re right, depending on how you file your taxes, depending on how you’re generating your income and retirement, which accounts you’re pulling the money from if you’re no longer earning a salary at this point, that’s all going to impact what that bottom line is for each individual family.

Tom Temin Yes, because you have to figure in your Social Security payments in there because that’s taxable since 1980. They’ve been taxing Social Security income, which kind of sounds absurd since you paid 6% tax on your income for your whole working life. And so did your employer or employers. And yet, it’s taxable.

Thiago Glieger Yeah, it’s tax on tax. And a lot of people don’t recognize that. They think Social Security is not taxed. But a good chunk of it is likely going to be taxed because you’ve got a first pension that essentially puts you in that you’ve already started with taxable income, which means your Social Security will be too.

Tom Temin All right. So bottom line then do some real analysis before you worry about paying off the mortgage on your house.

Thiago Glieger I really think it’s good to do some sort of financial modeling on this, because if you take out a huge swath of your money and now it belongs in a real estate property instead of your portfolio, what does that do to the longevity of your retirement plan. Do you still have sufficient liquid assets to be able to support your lifestyle for the rest of your life? And also understanding that there is some emotional component to this as well, if you are financially benefiting from keeping the mortgage, but it’s keeping you up, because you’re just stressed constantly, that’s not a successful retirement plan. And so I think taking an approach of understanding, I’ve shared with you the Venn diagram of what makes financial sense, of what really makes you happy. And retirement planning lives in the middle, because sometimes you have to do something that isn’t the squeezing the last drop of money out of the system, but it makes you incredibly happy and you’re fulfilled, and you’re happy to pass on a mortgage free property to your kids. That’s meaningful in a lot of different ways, too.

Tom Temin And if you do hang on to the house and you’ve got a mortgage and you’re in a reasonably sellable area, that’s always a God forbid option. You can always sell the house at some point and then realize that capital gains because it solves some other unanticipated problem. It may produce these new tax problems, but it solves whatever that came away that you never anticipated.

Thiago Glieger Right, exactly. You can create lines of credit against the house. You can sell the house, move to something smaller. And a lot of people will do that, especially as they phase their retirement because the house is too big. Maybe it doesn’t have everything they need to age in place, and so they find themselves moving somewhere else.

The post Why it pays to think twice about paying off that mortgage before retirement first appeared on Federal News Network.

• The Department of Veterans Affairs paid out $11 million in bonuses to career executives not eligible to receive them. Now a bipartisan group of lawmakers is seeking answers. House lawmakers are asking VA how long it will take to claw back those bonuses and what steps it will take to hold department leaders accountable. The lawmakers also want to know what steps VA will take to ensure future financial incentives are awarded responsibly.
  (Spanberger demands answers, accountability from VA over nearly $11 million misspent on executive bonuses - Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.))
• For the second time this week, a federal cybersecurity leader is heading out the door. Eric Goldstein, the executive assistant director for cybersecurity at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, is leaving federal service after more than three years. CISA confirmed his last day will be in June, but didn't say exactly when. Goldstein's decision to leave government comes two days after Chris DeRusha, the federal chief information security officer, announced his decision to move on. CISA Director Jen Easterly praised Goldstein, saying through his leadership CISA pioneered new models of operational collaboration, reshaped its ability to detect and address cyber risks and shifted the balance toward building technology that is secure by design. A CISA spokesperson didn't say who would be acting in his place after Goldstein leaves.
  (Second senior cyber leader this week to exit federal service - Federal News Network)
• Transportation Security Administration employees are about to see major workforce changes. That is after TSA signed off on a new collective bargaining agreement with the American Federation of Government Employees. The seven-year contract offers more official time, sick leave, uniform allowances and much more. It also comes after TSA workers received a major pay bump last year. Altogether, it will have a massive positive impact, said TSA Administrator David Pekoske. “If we didn’t have this CBA, if we didn’t have this pay package, I would submit to you, we probably wouldn’t have a TSA in five or 10 years,” Pekoske said. Looking ahead, AFGE is now calling for the passage of a bill to further cement workforce rights at TSA.
  (TSA, AFGE see milestone contract as ‘pivot point’ for frontline workforce - Federal News Network)
• New legislation in the House calls for a crackdown on improper payments. Federal agencies made more than $230 billion in improper payments last year. A bipartisan bill seeks to rein in that wasteful spending. The Enhancing Improper Payment Accountability Act would subject federal spending programs to stricter reporting requirements if they pay out more than $100 million annually. It would also require agencies to report out their antifraud and risk management controls. Reps. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.) and Blake Moore (R-Utah) are leading the bill.
  (Spanberger, Moore Introduce Bipartisan Legislation to Reduce Improper Payments, Strengthen Confidence in Federal Programs - Federal News Network)
• The White House wants agencies to consider social and behavioral science in policymaking. On Wednesday, the Biden administration released its Blueprint for the use of Social and Behavioral Science to Advance Evidence-Based Policymaking. Policymakers will have access to data used to measure the effectiveness of government services, and how they reach their intended targets, before developing programs. The blueprint provides a hundred examples of how social and behavioral science has been used to advance innovation and ensures that agencies will have the appropriate number of staff with the required expertise.
  (White House releases policymaking guide - Whitehouse.gov)
• The Technology Modernization Fund Board is making its first investment in generative artificial intelligence as part of awarding four new investments, worth $49.2 million, to three agencies yesterday. The State Department received its first two awards from the TMF, including $18.2 million to use GenAI in its data environment to improve the sharing and understanding of information among all of its offices around the world. The State Department also won funding to modernize its identity and access management tools. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Office of Federal Student Aid won the two awards from the TMF to modernize customer-facing systems. Since January 1, the TMF Board has made nine awards to eight agencies.
  (State, NOAA, Education win new IT modernization funding - Federal News Network)
• The Army is getting rid of its online training for enlisted troops. The service is eliminating the requirement for all enlisted soldiers to complete the Distributed Leader Course. Soldiers currently working on the courses will not be required to complete them. And soldiers who have not begun the training are no longer required to start. Enlisted soldiers were previously required to complete the courses before attending a noncommissioned officer academy.
  (Army eliminating Distributed Leader Course - U.S. Army)
• The Department of Veterans Affairs is trying to use a career development portal to boost its cyber workforce skills. The internal VA website includes training modules spanning 32 different cyber work roles across the agency. Through the portal, the VA is offering courses in IT, AI awareness and much more. VA employees can also take a self-assessment to decide what skills they can — and should — try to develop. The goal is two-fold: improve retention of the agency’s cyber employees, and close some of the VA's existing skills gaps in technology.
  (VA career development portal - Department of Veterans Affairs)
• The Department of Homeland Security will launch a cyber task force focused on artificial intelligence if a bipartisan bill makes it through Congress. The bill would require the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to lead a group to address safety and security challenges posed by AI. CISA’s AI task force would give annual updates on its work to Congress. Reps. Troy Carter (D-La.) and Bennie Thompson (D-Texas) introduced the bill.
  (Congressman Carter, Thompson Introduce CISA Securing AI Task Force Act - Rep. Troy Carter (D-La.))
• House lawmakers want to give personnel at the Office of Strategic Capital temporary assignments in the private sector. The House Armed Services Committee’s draft defense bill would require the Defense Department to establish a program under which the Office of Strategic Capital would arrange assignments for its employees at private companies, with the goal of improving their understanding of emerging defense industrial base capabilities and the role of venture capital in shaping future modernization requirements.
  (Lawmakers want to place Office of Strategic Capital employees in private companies - House Documents)

The post Spanberger demands VA clean up its act when awarding financial incentives first appeared on Federal News Network.

Leaders at TSA and AFGE signed off on a new seven-year collective bargaining agreement (CBA) Thursday afternoon, covering some 42,000 transportation security officers working in airports across the country. The agency and labor officials penned the document at a signing ceremony at John F. Kennedy International Airport in Queens, New York.

The new CBA replaces a previous and relatively limited labor-management agreement between the two parties. It also comes after TSA employees recently received, and later maintained, a substantial pay increase. Prior to those changes, the agency was struggling significantly with staff recruitment and retention.

“If we didn’t have this CBA, if we didn’t have this pay package, I would submit to you, we probably wouldn’t have a TSA in five or 10 years,” TSA Administrator David Pekoske said at Thursday’s signing ceremony. “That’s how important it is.”

The pay raises, which in some cases resulted in 31% salary boosts, brought TSA pay in line with the rest of the federal government. As a result, the agency is already reporting more interest in job openings, and drastically reduced attrition rates. In April, Pekoske told House lawmakers that staff attrition has fallen by 9% since the historic pay raises last year. TSA’s fiscal 2025 budget request includes funding to continue the raise, as well as provide more career development opportunities for agency employees.

Under the new agreement, transportation security officers will see a streamlined process for grievance and arbitration, expanded official time, fewer restrictions on sick leave, increased uniform allowances and opportunities for local collective bargaining. The new CBA expands the previous agreement from 14 articles, now to 37.

“These changes make TSA a place where Americans want to work,” AFGE National President Everett Kelley said at Wednesday’s signing ceremony. “It makes the TSA a place where anybody will want to come to work and feel like they are part of the team.”

At Thursday’s event, Pekoske told reporters that the latest Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey (FEVS) results showed the highest ever engagement and satisfaction in the agency’s history. Pekoske added that he hopes the new contract will set the stage for an even better labor-management relationship moving forward.

“I think what we ought to be thinking about is, where can we go from here? How can we continue this pivot to make sure that as an agency, every single one of us has a commitment to our people?” Pekoske said. “We should use [the CBA] as a pivot point to even greater relationships amongst all of us together.”

The agreement is a milestone for the agency, especially to employees who have been working at TSA for many years, and who have experienced a slow yet major shift in the ability for workers to organize.

“When I first started at the agency, we weren’t even allowed to join the union, much less bargain with the agency,” Mac Johnson, vice president of AFGE Council 100, said Thursday. “It took until 2007 for us to be able to join AFGE, and we weren’t even able to sit down at the table with TSA until 2011. This contract is the first one to be bargained with similar rights to Title 5. But our journey isn’t complete yet.”

Title 5 is the personnel system that sets pay, benefits and performance standards for the vast majority of federal employees. When Congress created TSA in 2002, it excluded the agency’s employees from the General Schedule pay scale and other provisions of the Title 5 personnel system.

In effect, the new collective bargaining agreement provides Title 5 protections to TSA workers, but AFGE leaders are already looking ahead to the next chapter. They are aiming to secure Title 5 rights for the long haul by putting Title 5 into law for TSA employees. That would cement many of the CBA’s new provisions, extending them beyond the seven years the contract will cover.

A new bicameral bill from Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) and Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) aims to accomplish just that. The Rights for the TSA Workforce Act, which the lawmakers introduced on May 14, would give all 60,000 TSA employees Title 5 protections. The legislation has gained both Democrat and Republican cosponsors.

In a video message at Thursday’s event, Thompson said the new collective bargaining agreement “will have a fundamental impact on TSA’s ability to recruit and maintain employees, and carry out its security mission,” but added that “there’s still work to be done. We need to ensure these improvements are made permanent in law so that no future administration can seek to undo them.”

The post TSA, AFGE see milestone contract as ‘pivot point’ for frontline workforce first appeared on Federal News Network.

The Department of Veterans Affairs would receive additional pay flexibilities for its health care workforce, if a sweeping legislative makes it through Congress.

Top lawmakers on the House and Senate committees introduced the Sen. Elizabeth Dole 21st Century Veterans Healthcare and Benefits Improvement Act on Tuesday.

In addition to pay and workforce provisions, the legislative package would set new requirements for the VA to meet before it resumes the rollout of a new Electronic Health Record, which remains on hold as the department addresses issues at sites already using the new system.

The legislation pulls together several bills lawmakers introduced this session of Congress to improve VA health care and benefits delivery.

Senate VA Committee Chairman Jon Tester (D-Mont.) said in a statement the bill is a “common-sense step towards delivering veterans and their families the kind of support they earned and deserve.”

House VA Committee Chairman Mike Bost (R-Ill.) said the bill reflects a year-and-a-half of feedback gathered from veterans and veterans service organizations “to find the gaps within VA’s services and consider commonsense legislation to improve them where we can.”

VA pay flexibilities & staffing updates

The legislative package would give VA additional flexibility to offer pay awards, as well as recruitment, retention and relocation bonuses to its health care workforce.

The bill would allow the VA to waive pay limitations for up to 300 personnel, “if deemed necessary for the recruitment or retention of critical health care personnel.”

The package would also require each VA physician, podiatrist, optometrist and dentist to receive an annual pay evaluation.  VA would have to give Congress an annual report on the outcome of these pay evaluations, and all resulting market pay adjustments.

The bill would also give the VA the authority to pay retroactive compensation to health care employees who exceeded annual pay caps between Jan. 8, 2006, and Dec. 31, 2017.

Lawmakers are also calling on the VA to keep Congress up to date on its staffing needs.

The bill would also require the VA to develop staffing models for its Office of Integrated Veteran Care, Veterans Integrated Services Networks (VISNs), and VA medical centers that will allow the department to “ensure timely access to care and to effectively oversee the provision of care.”

The VA would also have to submit annual reports to Congress and the Government Accountability Office on its efforts to meet these staffing targets.

The VA saw record hiring last year, and now has its largest health care workforce. However, the VA is limiting health care hiring this year to a few targeted areas.

By 2025, the department is looking to reduce its overall headcount by about 10,000 positions — most of them at the Veterans Health Administration. The department expects to manage this headcount reduction through attrition.

New requirements for Oracle-Cerner EHR

VA may also face new requirements to get the rollout of its Oracle-Cerner EHR back on track

The sweeping legislation also pulls together components of EHR reform bills that House and Senate VA committee leaders introduced in recent years.

The bill would restrict the VA from taking steps to roll out the new EHR to additional facilities, until the department submits data showing all facilities currently using the Oracle-Cerner system “have recovered to normal operational levels.”

If passed, the bill would require the VA to end its EHR Modernization Program within two years, unless the department certifies facilities using the Oracle-Cerner EHR have recovered, and that health care quality data shows steady improvement since the system went live at each facility.

The bill would give the VA 90 days to set health care quality metrics for the new EHR, “taking into account relevant differences in size, complexity, and market composition of VHA facilities.”

VHA would also have to certify the system is “fully and accurately built and configured,” that VA facility staff are ready to use the system and that the new EHR meets contractually required uptime requirements.

VA officials say the department’s most recent go-live of the Oracle-Cerner EHR at the Capt. James A. Lovell Federal Health Care Center in North Chicago has been the most successful go-live to date.

The VA is in a “reset” period, and will not roll the new EHR out to additional facilities until it addresses persistent issues at sites already using the system.

Since its first new EHR go-live, VA’s inspector general office has documented instances of the system contributing to patient harm.  The watchdog has also linked the EHR’s performance issues to veteran deaths.

VA Secretary Denis McDonough told members of the House VA Committee last month that the department does not anticipate staying in reset for the entirety of fiscal 2025.

“We’re not staying in reset forever. As we approach the end of this year, I anticipate us being in discussions to get out of reset,” McDonough told the committee.

VA’s 2025 budget request seeks $894 million for EHR modernization. It doesn’t include any funding for additional deployments. The funding would go toward contract payments to Oracle-Cerner, and infrastructure support for VA sites already using the new EHR.

If VA gets out of reset in 2025, and resumes deployment, McDonough told lawmakers that the VA has “prior appropriated money available to us to deploy when we get out of reset.”

The post Sweeping VA bill seeks more pay flexibility for health care workers, stricter EHR requirements first appeared on Federal News Network.

VA’s inspector general office, in a report released Thursday, found the department improperly awarded $10.8 million in critical skills incentives (CSIs) to more than 180 executives.

Congress authorized these incentives under the toxic-exposure PACT Act to help the VA retain employees with in-demand skills, or skills that are in short supply, and serve a mission-critical need.

VA OIG found a wider scope of improper bonuses than the department previously stated. The VA announced last September that it paid out $9.7 million in bonuses to 170 career executives at VA’s Central Office.

VA says more than 90% of critical skills incentives went to eligible recipients — including police officers, housekeepers and food service workers.

The department also continues to recoup bonuses it paid out in error. Investigators found the VA, so far, has paid $230 million of these incentives to non-executive employees in shortage positions.

VA Press Secretary Terrence Hayes said in a statement that the department “immediately cancelled and began recoupment for all CSI payments made to career senior executives at VA headquarters,” once the department discovered the error.

Hayes added that VA is revising and updating its CSI policies, “to ensure all future CSIs are awarded appropriately.”

“Moving forward, we will continue to work to ensure that everyone who receives a CSI meets the criteria to do so. This authority is critical to retaining and hiring VA public servants, especially at a time when we’re delivering more care and more benefits to more Veterans than ever before – and we will make sure that we are utilizing it effectively, correctly, and as responsible stewards of taxpayer money,” Hayes said.

House VA Committee Chairman Mike Bost (R-Ill.) said in a statement that “VA inappropriately used the money to line the pockets of VA executives to the detriment of VA’s workforce and the veterans they serve.”

“The over $10 million in overpayments to VA central office employees were not some type of administrative mistake – that’s a serious problem for the second largest agency in the federal government – and we’re going to get to the bottom of it come hell or high water,” Bost said.

‘I had no idea the sheer number of SESs’

Investigators found more than 80% of the improperly paid bonuses went to members of the Senior Executive Service at the Veterans Health Administration, and the rest went to executives at the Veterans Benefits Administration.

Under Secretary for Health Shereef Elnahal told investigators: “I had no idea the sheer number of SESs at VHA Central Office. I had no idea that we had upwards of 150 of them . . . I think if I had known that, my management instinct would be to get the same level of justifications together and the costs [as for the field executives].”

VA OIG found that VHA started developing its plan in late March 2023.

By early April, VHA workforce management staff prepared spreadsheets with all potential recipients of the critical skills incentive  — along with their salaries and the total amount they would receive as bonuses.

Investigators found VA Secretary Denis McDonough did not learn about these incentives going to department executives until September 13, 2023, when he was alerted by the department’s chief financial officer.

“VHA never disclosed to Secretary McDonough the details of VHA’s plan to pay CSIs to all VACO senior executives, despite specific requests from the secretary regarding the planned use of these incentives in the months before they were awarded,” the report states.

After learning about the executive bonuses, McDonough requested the Office of General Counsel review the payments.

McDonough told investigators: “One can surely read the statute to say that [incentive payments to executives and central office] would be allowable . . . [However,] I have a hard time reading the statute and concluding that every senior executive in central office qualifies for a CSI. And I think that’s functionally where we ended up on the decision . . . to cancel them.”

VA’s Office of General Counsel concluded the awards were improper because the groups had been defined too broadly, and recommended canceling the awards.

“While staff attorneys in OGC had reviewed the plans in June 2023, they were not provided all available information and may not have had the same broad perspective as the senior attorneys who later found the awards improper,” the report states.

Among its recommendations, VA OIG says McDonough “should take whatever administrative actions, if any, he deems appropriate related to the personnel involved in the process for granting CSIs for VA central office executives.”

‘The trust is absolutely shot’

VA sent collection notices in late October to all senior executives who received critical skills incentives.

Executives who received the notices had the option to repay the bonuses by Dec. 31, 2023, or agree to a payment plan to recoup the bonus amount before the end of the tax year.

However, VA OIG said its investigative team received information suggesting VA’s handling of the critical skills incentives “had significantly damaged the morale of its senior executives at the central office, and that several had experienced financial hardship as a result of having to repay the incentives.”

Investigators say two senior executives retired from VBA “as a direct result” of the situation.

Another VBA official, who retired in December 2023, told investigators that, although he had already planned to retire soon, the recoupment made his decision easier.”

“Folks don’t have this money that was given to them,” a VA executive said during an October 2023 town hall, according to investigators.  “Folks paid college tuition for their children. People paid off debt. People did all types of things to better their lives and now VA says we made an error [and we] want that money back. I think leadership really needs to see the human factor of what they’re doing because the accountability is gone, and the trust is absolutely shot.”

In addition to canceling and recouping the bonuses, McDonough rescinded his delegation of authority, which allowed VA under secretaries to approve their own senior executives’ awards.

The VA OIG found neither VHA nor VBA assessed whether the incentives it was paying to executives were necessary to retain them.

“VHA provided no market factors in support of its CSIs, and VBA’s justification was based on flawed assumptions, including that every senior executive was equivalent to a private sector CEO,” the report states.

Under Secretary for Benefits Joshua Jacobs told investigators that VBA’s “retention numbers are better than the six-year average” despite increasing workloads, which undercuts the proposed need for such a broad award of CSIs for retention.”

A senior executive in VA’s Human Resources and Administration/Operations, Security, and Preparedness office (HRA/OSP), who had concerns about the bonuses, said the approval process for these payouts paled in comparison to the requirements to justify much smaller incentives.

“I can’t even give a GS employee a special contribution award for $250 without writing an entire page about how great they are and forms and process. And this, with a stroke of a pen and three sentences, they’re saying these folks are critical because they’re critical, giving all these people this huge amount of money,” the official told investigators.

No executives at the National Cemetery Administration or any other VA program or staff office at VA headquarters received a critical skills incentive payment.

Under Secretary for Memorial Affairs Matthew Quinn told OIG investigators that NCA was aware of VHA and VBA’s plans to offer critical skills incentives to central office senior executives, but opted not to do so, because NCA didn’t have “a justifiable reason to do so.”

VA OIG notes that no political appointees or non-SES executives received these bonuses and that a “small number” of executives declined the critical skills incentives they were offered.

Senior HR personnel told investigators that the VA had broader and more flexible authority to offer critical skills incentives, compared to some of its other retention and recruitment incentives.

The Office of Personnel Management oversees those other retention incentives, and agencies can only offer them to employees who are considering leaving for private-sector positions — not other jobs within the federal government.

“CSIs are not subject to this restriction and may be paid to employees regardless of whether the risk of loss is to another federal agency or the private sector,” the report states.

VA may offer a critical skills incentive worth up to 25% of an employee’s basic pay. The report states seven senior VHA leaders were approved to receive incentives worth more than $100,000 each.

As these executive bonuses went through the approval process, a senior human resources official observed that with VHA’s proposed stacking of incentives, the salaries of some VA medical center directors could exceed a federal pay ceiling of $400,000 — the current salary of the president.

In order to receive the inventive payment, VA employees must sign an agreement to keep working at the VA for an “unspecified period.”

The critical skills incentive is set to expire on Sept. 30, 2027

The post VA paid nearly $11M in bonuses to ineligible executives, watchdog finds first appeared on Federal News Network.

• The head of the Transportation Security Administration said TSA’s recent salary increases are paying off, with staff attrition falling to nearly 9% since the historic pay raises last year. TSA Administrator David Pekoske, who testified before House lawmakers yesterday, said the agency's Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey scores are also improving. Last year’s pay raises brought TSA salaries in line with much of the rest of the federal workforce. And TSA’s budget request for 2025, includes $377 million to continue funding periodic pay raises and career ladder promotions.
  (Testimony of TSA Administrator David Pekoske - House Appropriations Committee)
• The Office of Personnel Management's top-most leadership position will soon be vacant. Kiran Ahuja is stepping down from her role as OPM director in early May. With nearly three years on the job, Ahuja is the longest-serving permanent OPM director in nearly a decade. Ahuja cited ongoing health concerns and a recent death in the family as the reasons behind her departure. OPM Deputy Director Rob Shriver will step in as the agency's acting director in the meantime.
  (Kiran Ahuja stepping down as OPM director - Federak News Network)
• The Postal Service is seeing problems with on-time delivery in areas where it is implementing its network modernization plans. Agency watchdogs said Richmond, Virginia and Atlanta are seeing the worst of these delays, after USPS opened large regional facilities there meant to consolidate operations. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy said service should stabilize in these areas by this summer. DeJoy told lawmakers he is still optimistic about the network changes and that they are critical to cutting costs. “We apologize to the constituents that have received that service. But in the long term, if we don’t make these changes, that will be every day, everywhere around the nation,“ DeJoy said.
  (DeJoy says USPS will fix ‘deteriorating’ service in regions facing network shakeup - Federal News Network )
• The Air Force will soon start two new projects, using the quick-start initiative. The service will be able to initiate a project on resilient GPS capabilities and on battle management for moving target indication through the quick-start authority. The quick-start provision, placed in the 2024 defense policy bill, allows the service to start working on new programs before Congress officially funds them.
  (Air Force uses quick start authority to start new projects - Senate Armed Services Committee)
• There has been broad support for a bill aiming to lift current limits on some federal retirees' Social Security benefits. If enacted, the Social Security Fairness Act would repeal the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) and the Government Pension Offset (GPO). But some opponents of the legislation are still raising concerns. They told House lawmakers during a hearing yesterday that the original WEP and GPO policies were meant to ensure fair treatment, and maintain equity. They worry that removing WEP and GPO would also cause solvency issues in Social Security. Still, proponents of the legislation say the WEP and GPO are unfair to public sector workers. They are calling for the legislation's passage.
  (Hearing on WEP and GPO - House Ways and Means Committee Social Security Subcommittee)
• Air Force officials are pursuing a provision in the 2025 defense policy bill to move all National Guard space units to the Space Force. The service wants to bring those units under the Space Force Personnel Management Act. Under this legislation, the Space Force is already moving 1,000 full-time Air Force reservists to the Space Force. Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said there will be minimal changes to the way Air National Guardsmen will serve under the potential new structure.
  (Air Force pushing for transfer of Guard units to Space Force - Federal News Network)
• Veterans are giving higher trust scores to the health care they receive from the Department of Veterans Affairs. Veteran trust in VA outpatient care is up to nearly 92%. The data is based on surveys of more than 480,000 veterans, who received VA care in the past 90 days. Veterans rated the VA on criteria such as ease of scheduling an appointment, the quality of care received, and pharmacy service. Veterans gave the VA an 85% trust score when the department started tracking these metrics in 2018.
  (Trust in VA among veteran patients rises to 91.8%, up 6% since 2018 - Department of Veterans Affairs )
• The National Security Agency is urging organizations to deploy AI systems with security in mind. The NSA’s new guidance on deploying artificial intelligence systems, released this week, includes security recommendations for the in-demand technology. The agency said the rapid adoption of AI systems makes them a big target for hackers. Recommendations include protecting sensitive data and guarding against the potential misuse of AI systems. The NSA said organizations will also need to update their systems to address evolving AI risks, while still adhering to traditional IT security best practices.
  (NSA guidance on “Deploying AI Systems Securely” - NSA)

The post Since recent pay raise, fewer feds leaving TSA first appeared on Federal News Network.

The Department of Veterans Affairs is reviewing more than 4,000 positions at risk of a downgrade in their respective pay scales.

The six VA positions under review include a mix of white-collar General Schedule (GS) and blue-collar Wage Grade (WG) positions.

The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) estimates about 56% of VA employees in these 4,000 positions are veterans. Some of the positions under review cover VA employees who make less than $20 an hour.

The positions the VA is reviewing cover all 18 Veterans Integrated Services Networks (VISNs). More than 1,700 positions under review are located in the Veterans Health Administration’s Finance Revenue Operations and Procurement and Logistics Office.

AFGE says affected employees have received notices in the mail about the consistency reviews. But Thomas Dargon, supervisory attorney for AFGE’s National VA Council, said the union hasn’t received notice from the VA yet about any imminent downgrades.

However, if the VA decides to downgrade any of these positions, Dargon said the department will face an even harder time filling these positions.

“The bell’s already been rung here. I’ve seen the letters that have gone out to impacted employees, and VA doesn’t have a lot of answers to the questions they’re asking,” Dargon said.

The VA put a moratorium on downgrading employee positions in 2012, allowing the department to revise a national handbook, computer software and other administrative tasks to ensure it classified employees fairly and consistently.

The VA, however, ended that moratorium earlier this year, and is conducting “consistency reviews” on six of its occupations, at the direction of the Office of Personnel Management.

VA Press Secretary Terrence Hayes told Federal News Network in a statement that OPM directed the VA to conduct agency-wide consistency reviews of these six occupations, after VA employees appealed the classification of their positions to OPM.

OPM, following a classification oversight review of VA in spring 2023, determined that two positions, industrial hygienist GS-0690-12 and purchasing agent (prosthetics) GS-1105-06, were not properly classified at the correct grade level.

VA, in a memo obtained by Federal News Network, said its Office of the Chief Human Capital Officer, “is working to strengthen consistency and oversight of classification determinations across the department by taking action to ensure employees are in appropriately and consistently classified positions, reduce geographical and organizational pay disparities and decrease hiring times.”

The VA is conducting consistency reviews on the following positions:

• File Clerk (GS-0305-05 and above)
• Financial Accounts Assistant (GS-503-all grades)
• Industrial Hygienist (GS-0690-12 and above)
• Purchasing Agent (OA) (GS-1105-07 and above)
• Housekeeping Aid (WG-3 and above)
• Boiler Plant Operator (WG-5402-10 and above)

Reviews of these occupations will occur in two phases. The first phase of reviews began on March 1 and will conclude on April 26. The department will start a second phase on April 29, and complete the reviews by May 1. VA expects to submit all its reviews to OPM by May 1.

“VHA Consolidated Classification Units will be required to initiate a consistency review process, which will require the identification of [position descriptions] in need of review. [Position descriptions] determined not properly classified will be sunset through attrition and positions impacted will be recruited at the appropriate grade levels, as applicable,” the VA memo states.

Once VA conducts its consistency reviews, it will provide reports back to OPM on whether their internal findings demonstrated that those positions are properly classified as compared to OPM standards.

“From there, I suspect some decision will be made,” Dargon said. “AFGE has not been notified of any imminent downgrade at this point, but I do not suspect the consistency reviews to result in employees being upgraded.”

Dargon said AFGE “does not support any downgrade whatsoever, and that “there is already a significant pay disparity between the public sector and the private sector.”

“VA has a notoriously difficult time not only recruiting, but retaining employees, and downgrading these positions is not going to make it any easier to fill them. And it is not going to bolster morale in the workplace,” Dargon said.

Hayes told Federal News Network that the VA issued a letter temporarily suspending changes to lower grade actions on June 29, 2012. Hayes said OPM assessed VA’s classification process in March 2023, and in September 2023, “determined there were no barriers prohibiting VA from conducting the reviews.”

VA, he added, expects to complete its consistency reviews of these positions by May 31.

“Should the reviews conclude that any positions were improperly classified, VA will consider all potential options to correct this misclassification,” Hayes said. “VA will do all we can to mitigate any potential adverse impact to our current employees. VA is committed to partnering with OPM to update classification standards and ensure they reflect the work done at VA and across the federal government.”

According to slides obtained by Federal News Network from a VA briefing presentation, VHA directed its Workforce Management and Consulting Office to cancel any VHA job opportunity announcements (JOAs) for occupations and grades that are subject to the consistency reviews.

As part of the consistency reviews, VHA classifiers will take a closer look at the qualifications required to perform the work for each occupation, and whether the agency has properly applied OPM’s classification or job-grading standards.

Classifiers cannot compare these six positions to other VA jobs or positions, consider any qualifications the employee has that are not required to perform the job, or account for how well an employee performs the work or the amount of work the employee performs.

“The goal of a classification consistency review is to ensure positions are classified in compliance with OPM classification standards and graded consistently VHA-wide,” the presentation slides state.

VHA is outlining “mitigation strategies” for pay-related staffing challenges. They include supplementing the base pay of these six positions with recruitment and retention incentives — such as critical skills incentives and special salary rates available under the toxic-exposure PACT Act.

“I can appreciate that the HR community at VA is trying to create a soft landing for employees who may be impacted by these downgrades through various recruitment and retention incentives, or ‘mitigation strategies,’ as they call them. But that’s not good enough, Dargon said. “There’s no reason to downgrade these employees, to make these positions harder to fill than they already are.”

Under Secretary for Heath Shereef Elnahal included housekeepers as part of a “Big Seven” list of occupations outlined in the VHA’s top hiring priorities in 2023. Those “Big Seven” positions cover VHA jobs that have a direct impact on patient care — and include physicians, nurses, licensed practical nurses, nursing assistants and food service workers.

Dargon warned that any potential reduction in pay for housekeepers would “be felt very quickly and sharply by folks in that field.” He said VA housekeepers in Pittsburgh, for example, are currently making about $16 an hour.

“These jobs are difficult to fill, and it’s difficult to retain workers,” Dargon said. “We have people who have military backgrounds themselves, who are veterans coming back to the VA, continue giving back, who believe in the mission, who are making just over $15, $16, $17 an hour — and you’ve got VA considering a downgrade.”

Dargon said the VA, by sending these letters to impacted employees, puts them in a position of “feeling undervalued or not seen.”

“Housekeeping aids are very much the backbone of health care institutions. You do not need to be a nurse or a doctor to be considered a vitally important part of the healthcare system that is VA,” he said. “Telling those employees who are working, in some instances, in really difficult environments, every hour of the day, to keep the VA clean and safe, that their position is actually compensated too highly — I can’t imagine what that feels like.”

Dargon said that if VA were to downgrade any of these occupations, it would probably lead to the department contracting out more of this work, “because the positions have become so unattractive through pay or other working conditions.”

VA saw record hiring last year, but is now looking to manage the size of its largest-ever health care workforce.

VA in its fiscal 2025 budget request plans to reduce its total workforce headcount by 10,000 positions. Most of the workforce reduction would come from VHA.

VHA Chief Financial Officer Laura Duke told reporters last month that the workforce reduction is necessary, because the agency far exceeded its hiring goals last year, and because it’s seeing higher-than-expected retention rates.

VHA earlier this year rescinded some temporary and final job offers to prospective hires. But the agency later issued a memo, telling leadership and HR officials to only rescind job offers as an “action of last resort.”

AFGE and VA finalized a new labor agreement last August, updating the terms of their labor contract for the first time in more than a decade.

VA Secretary Denis McDonough, at the signing ceremony, said the new contract would help with “easing the process by which we can fill vacancies,” and will allow the department to make new hires more quickly.

Dargon, however, said recent events suggest the VA is no longer making an effective pitch to prospective hires.

“I was on the negotiating team for the master agreement, and sat at the bargaining table with department officials who insisted that the reason they could not quickly hire employees was because of the provisions in the collective bargaining agreement — that it took too long that these were hurdles or impediments to quick hiring. We knew that was never the case, but we agreed to certain revisions in our contract to allow for more streamlined hiring procedures,” Dargon said. “Now they’re telling us they’ve hired too many people, maybe they’re not going to hire as quickly, they’re not going to fill vacancies through attrition. And now we’re looking at existing positions, and the idea of downgrading them.”

The post VA reviewing 4,000 positions at risk of pay downgrade first appeared on Federal News Network.

The results of our 13th annual financial readiness test show career military families struggle in this area. Only 2% of military test takers correctly answered all nine questions, which is designed to measure basic money knowledge associated with financial readiness. This compares to 6% of civilian respondents.

While financial education plays a role in improving military families’ money mastery, it’s not the only solution. There are two other key elements — which go hand-in-hand — that can help military families improve their financial readiness.

Using good habits to pursue goals

The role of everyday habits cannot be overstated. In his book “Atomic Habits,” James Clear asserts “habits are the compound interest of self-improvement.” He makes the case that daily, seemingly insignificant choices — saving a few dollars, investing consistently, or avoiding unnecessary debt — compound over the years into something powerful. Clear proves the point that small habits can lead to big transformations. First Command Financial Advisors see this in action every day as they coach military families in their pursuit of financial security.

We recommend consistency in simple habits, like automatically depositing a portion of each paycheck into savings or an investment account or sticking to a budget. While this can be easier said than done, 2024 might be an ideal time to increase your savings. Service members are expected to receive a 5.2% pay raise in January, one of the biggest annual pay raises in the last 40 years. Consider stashing a little more money into a savings or investment account. First Command Advisors believe in the merits of the 50/50 Plan. The idea is to allocate half of every pay raise to upgrading your current lifestyle and the other half to building a foundation for your financial future.

Creating systems to form good habits

Many people set out to adopt new habits but fail without a system to achieve the habit. For example, you may have a goal to stick to a budget. While this is a worthy aim, without a budgeting tool and time set aside to make sure you’re staying on track, you likely won’t. In many cases, the probability that you’ll form a long-lasting habit is as likely as the strength of the system you have in place.

Katy Milkman, author of the book “How to Change,” advises this five-pronged approach to habit formation.

• Set a specific goal. Try a specific goal like “I’ll save $100 each month.” Research shows a benefit to being specific about exactly what you want to achieve.
• Create a detailed, cue-based plan. You need to think about exactly how you’ll fit this goal into your life. For a budget-based goal, this could be “I’ll review my budget every Tuesday after dinner.”
• Make it fun to repeat. If the idea of reviewing your monthly budget sounds like pulling teeth, consider adding a positive reward to sweeten the routine. This could look like trying a new restaurant for takeout or enjoying your favorite beverage.
• Foster flexibility. If your routine becomes too brittle, you’ll follow through less often. If your original plan doesn’t pan out, be OK with pivoting.
• Find the right kind of social support. Milkman emphasizes the importance of social support in building and maintaining habits. For some habits, this could mean sharing your goals with family and friends. For financial habits, this could be the support of a financial advisor. 

Financial advisors: Your financial habit building support team

The second way you pursue financial readiness is by enlisting the help of a financial advisor. The First Command Financial Behaviors Index shows that, on average, military families who work with an advisor report average monthly contributions to savings and retirement accounts totaling $3,316 per month versus $1,298 for their colleagues without an advisor. If you’re looking to improve your financial literacy and set good habits, start by reaching out to a financial advisor who knows the military lifestyle.

You work hard in service of your family and the nation. Don’t neglect to pursue your financial goals. By establishing a system to nurture good financial habits and working with a financial advisor, even your most far-fetched goals may be possible.

Mark Steffe is president and CEO of First Command Financial Services, Inc.

The post Harness the power of good habits to pursue your financial goals first appeared on Federal News Network.

The fiscal 2024 homeland security appropriations measure includes $1.1 billion to continue the pay increases at TSA that began last July. Those raises brought TSA salaries in line with the rest of the federal government. The agency is already reporting drastically reduced attrition rates as a result of the pay bump.

Some Republican lawmakers had advanced legislation to reverse the higher pay rates for some non-Transportation Security Officer employees. The issue was reportedly among the areas of contention this week as appropriators raced to reach an agreement on the homeland security spending bill.

But the final bill ultimately continues the new pay rates, at least through the end of this fiscal year. In a statement, American Federation for Government Employees President Everett Kelley applauded the provision for TSA pay.

“We are very happy that Congress is providing the Transportation Security Administration with the funding it needs to competitively pay its workers and address recruiting and retention challenges that affect everyone who travels by air,” Kelley said.

However, the funding of TSA pay, separate from other federal employees, through the appropriations process means the issue will continue to be subject to the often-protracted annual battle in Congress over spending.

Meanwhile, TSA recently reached a landmark, seven-year collective bargaining agreement with AFGE. The union ratified the contract last week. TSA leadership is reviewing the final details before signing off.

Border Patrol hiring

With border issues taking center stage in the debate over the spending bill, the agreement ultimately provided $496 million to swell the Border Patrol’s ranks to 22,000 agents. It also includes $125 million for Border Patrol overtime pay.

Customs and Border Protection is currently recruiting Border Patrol agents at the GS-11 level. The agency is offering a $20,000 recruitment incentive for agents who successfully complete the academy and another $10,000 to those who complete three years at a “hard-to-fill” location.

The spending bill also includes $20 million to hire an additional 150 CBP officers to support counter fentanyl efforts.

Meanwhile, the Biden administration is forecasting additional hiring increases for CBP and TSA in fiscal 2025 budget plans.

The homeland security package also includes $11.5 million for CBP’s suicide prevention and wellness efforts, as well as “employee onsite clinicians and child back-up care,” according to a summary of the legislation.

CISA funding cut

For the first time in years, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency will see a slight cut to its annual budget. The bill allocates $2.873 billion for CISA in fiscal 2024, about $34 million below the fiscal 2023 levels and $183.3 million below the Biden administration’s budget request.

Compared to last year, CISA will receive about $47 million less for the Joint Collaborative Environment program and $66 million less for the Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) program. At the same time, CISA will see a new funding line of $145 million for its Cyber Analytics and Data System effort.

CISA’s Chemical Security program also received a $15 million year-over-year cut in the bill. Lawmakers have yet to reauthorize the agency’s key chemical security inspections program.

The post TSA employees will keep their pay raises under 2024 spending deal first appeared on Federal News Network.

Years of pay caps have pulled the long-standing pay system for blue-collar federal employees away from the structure’s original intent.

The Federal Wage System (FWS), covering about 192,000 federal employees, was initially created to try to keep wages aligned with “prevailing,” or market rates in localized areas. But for the last 45 years, since fiscal 1979, many blue-collar feds have seen limits on their annual pay raises.

The intention of the pay caps is to ensure annual raises don’t exceed the raises that General Schedule (GS) employees get, and to address budgetary concerns, the Office of Personnel Management, which manages the pay system, has said.

But as a result, wages for blue-collar feds in 75% of FWS localities no longer align with local pay rates for similar jobs, according to a March 5 report from the Government Accountability Office.

There are also two different locality maps for GS and FWS employees. While the GS locality pay map contains 58 different areas, the FWS map has 248. The number is much higher for FWS because the map is connected to more targeted concentrations of federal employees working at, for instance, specific military bases, or Department of Veterans Affairs medical centers, GAO said.

“Employees in different FWS wage areas might find themselves with different annual pay increases. That has resulted in some, I think, confusion,” GAO Director of Strategic Issues Yvonne Jones, the report’s author, said in an interview. “[There have been] questions over the years for why the pay schedules for the two different sets of employees would be different, when the employees are working in what may look like the same place.”

Currently, out of the 248 Federal Wage System localities, 117 FWS localities are above prevailing rates, while 69 are below the market, GAO said.

The Biden administration said it’s “pursuing structural reforms” to some of the government’s largest pay systems — including the Federal Wage System for blue-collar feds, according to the 2025 budget request.

The Office of Management and Budget specifically pointed to what it said are long-standing “pay limitations” for blue-collar federal employees, as a result of aligning the pay ceilings and floors with those on the General Schedule.

One possible response to the issue may be “removing current ceilings in the FWS wage schedules and establishing a statutory minimum for annual pay rate adjustments,” OMB said in a budget request document.

Although the budget request alluded to some possible fixes, there is not yet a specific legislative proposal addressing the topic.

A proposal to merge FWS, GS maps

The Federal Prevailing Rate Advisory Committee is looking into another way to resolve some pay challenges for FWS employees.

In December 2023, the council, composed of members of OPM, the Defense Department and other stakeholders, voted 9-1 in favor of a draft proposal to merge the FWS locality map with the locality pay map for GS employees.

FPRAC has been considering possible reforms to the FWS map for 15 years. But the current draft proposal comes from a more recent 2022 request from Congress, which asked OPM to consider ways to merge the two locality pay maps.

Even though the council approved the proposal, some members said they still have “substantive” concerns about the cost and implementation of the changes.

A map-merger could lead to recruitment and retention issues for the Federal Wage System workforce in areas where the pay rates might decrease — possibly opening the door to federal positions moving to contract employees to save money, Nancy Speight, deputy assistant secretary of Defense for civilian personnel policy, said in December.

GAO’s Jones also said there are a number of complicated issues that need to be considered and assessed, if OPM were to merge the two maps.

For instance, aligning the maps would affect the wage survey DoD uses to help calculate wage rates in different FWS localities each year. DoD’s annual survey for FWS looks at data like job descriptions and numbers of employees in local areas to help set the pay rates each year.

“If you change the definition of the area, you will change the wage rates,” Jones said. “The point of the FWS system is to provide a wage rate which is close to the market rate in a particular geographic area. So, if you redefine the boundaries of that area, then of course you will change the data inputs into the survey.”

Those changes could lead to more Federal Wage System areas having either a lower or higher pay rate than the prevailing rate, Jones said, adding that “it’s hard to know without actually doing the exercise.”

Currently, OPM Director Kiran Ahuja and other agency officials are reviewing FPRAC’s recommendations. OPM is expected to issue a decision on the recommendations in April.

“We will be waiting with the interest, as others wait with interest, to see what that decision is,” Jones said.

GAO plans to publish another report in the near future on FWS. But right now, it’s in the very early stages of the process. Eventually, the report will look at wage rates for a range of military facilities across the country, and some of the issues associated with setting the priorities.

The post Federal Wage System for blue-collar feds puts some above, others below, local rates first appeared on Federal News Network.

After months of negotiations, the Transportation Security Administration has reached a milestone agreement with its union, the American Federation of Government Employees.

Now with a newly ratified seven-year collective bargaining agreement, TSA and AFGE are aiming to expand employee rights and workplace conditions for transportation security officers at airports across the country.

Coming after a pay increase TSA employees received in July 2023, the new contract will replace the previous agreement between TSA and AFGE.

The contract itself has significantly expanded as well. There were just 14 articles in the previous agreement — now, there are 37.

TSA employees will see a streamlined process for grievance and arbitration, expanded official time, fewer restrictions on their sick leave policy, and collective bargaining options at the local level — as just a few examples of what’s included in the new agreement.

Even seemingly smaller items in the contract — like letting TSA employees wear polo shirts and shorts on hot summer days — can make a significant impact for the workforce.

“It’s more flexible for the employees, their work-life balance, and the ability for them to make their shifts work well for them,” Johnny Jones, secretary-treasurer of AFGE Council 100 representing TSA employees, said in an interview. “There will be better communication, hopefully, between the union and management to resolve issues in the workplace.”

The union ratified the new collective bargaining agreement Monday. It now heads to agency leaders for a final review and sign-off before implementation begins.

“TSA is eager to partner with AFGE on the new collective bargaining agreement,” a TSA spokesperson said in a statement. “The agency has and continues to work closely with AFGE in support of our Transportation Security Officers around the country.”

The spokesperson said TSA could not comment on any specifics of the agreement until the agency head review is complete.

House Homeland Security Committee Ranking Member Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) said he’s “pleased” with the new agreement between TSA and AFGE.

“The improvements in this agreement, along with the boost in pay TSA’s frontline workforce began receiving last year, represent the most significant advancement for the workforce ever,” Thompson said in a statement.

Streamlined processes for grievances, arbitration

Under one notable provision of the new collective bargaining agreement, TSA officers can now file a grievance with TSA management for more types of adverse actions — including removals, involuntary demotions, and suspensions over two weeks, AFGE said in a press release Monday.

An employee can file a grievance, for example, when they take issue with a performance-based or adverse action that an agency manager has taken. And if an employee’s case doesn’t get resolved in the grievance process, AFGE can now move into the arbitration process to try to reach an agreement using a third-party arbitrator.

It’s a relatively complex part of the new contract, but Jones said it’s extremely important — it can protect TSA employees who may face challenges with management while on the job.

“Most people don’t understand the arbitration component until you’re actually in a situation like this,” Jones said. “It helps enhance the employee’s ability for the job protection because it becomes a fairer process, whereas it was so one-sided in the past. Now, it’s going to open up that ability for employees to check the balance of management’s powers.”

The future of the TSA pay raise

The new bargaining agreement dovetails with another recent, major change for TSA employees. The workforce received a major pay increase in July 2023, which brought their salaries on par with the rest of the federal civilian workforce. The TSA pay scale now mirrors the General Schedule.

The pay increases were first funded through the fiscal 2023 Homeland Security appropriations bill, which cleared Congress in late 2022. After the change, some TSA employees received as much as a 31% pay boost.

Since then, TSA attrition has declined by 11%, as the agency makes gains in retention and begins mitigating what has historically been high staff turnover. But because it was appropriations that made the pay raise possible, there’s always a chance the funding could be reversed in the future.

“Under the continuing resolution, the agency is having to rob Peter to pay Paul to keep everybody getting paid, because that’s the way the bill was set up,” Jones said. “It’s important to get the pay set up right, so we can get the full funding for it. We haven’t had that yet.”

At least for the next couple years, the pay equity initiative appears to be here to stay. The minibus appropriations package for fiscal 2024, signed into law last week, maintained the higher pay rates for agency employees.

And in the White House’s 2025 budget request, TSA would receive an additional $1.5 billion to continue funding the pay equity initiative.

“The TSA workforce deserves to be fairly compensated at rates comparable with their peers in the federal workforce,” the budget request said.

A push for Title 5 at TSA

For AFGE, there is more work ahead to fully solidify changes for TSA employees. For instance, Jones said, there are still concerns around overtime scheduling for TSA employees, who are often told to work overtime hours with little to no advance notice.

Currently, there’s no process in the bargaining agreement for managing or scheduling those extra hours.

“That was one of the biggest issues for employees, and that process is deemed non-negotiable by the agency,” Jones said. “There’s a lack of planning, which has an impact on the workforce. It’s last minute. The employees are tired of mandatory overtime. There has to be a better way.”

Additionally, AFGE is continuing to push for TSA to be moved into Title 5, the personnel system that sets pay, benefits and performance standards for the vast majority of federal employees. When Congress first created TSA in 2002, it specifically excluded agency employees from the General Schedule pay scale and the Title 5 personnel system.

Improvements to the arbitration process, for instance, could be taken another step further, Jones said, if TSA moved into Title 5.

“The way our arbitration process works, it’s a lot better than it was, but it’s not exactly 100% like other agencies would have,” Jones said. “It’s a great contract — we got a lot of what we would like to achieve. But we still have other issues that are a long ways from being resolved. We have to get what we can, when we can, and lock it in for as long as we can — until we can get Title 5. That’s the most important part.”

Federal News Network’s Justin Doubleday contributed to this report.

The post TSA, AFGE aim to expand workforce options in new 7-year contract first appeared on Federal News Network.

The bipartisan fiscal 2024 spending “minibus” lawmakers agreed to over the weekend leaves many agencies at or below last year’s spending levels.

While the spending package represents a crucial step toward moving several agencies off a continuing resolution and onto more solid spending ground for the rest of the fiscal year, agencies are facing further financial uncertainty for the long-term.

Still, the White House is urging a quick passage of the appropriations minibus.

“This bipartisan legislation represents a compromise and neither side got everything it wanted, but it would prevent a damaging shutdown of several key agencies, protect key priorities and make progress for the American people,” the Office of Management and Budget said in a statement of Administration Policy Tuesday.

The new package includes funding plans for the departments of Agriculture, Justice, Commerce, Energy, Interior, Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Veterans Affairs, as well as many smaller agencies.

After the March 8 deadline for passing the six-bill minibus, House and Senate appropriators are expected to turn to the remainder of the appropriations bills, which now have a March 22 deadline.

While agency spending plans appear to be nearing the finish line, what may be top of mind for many federal employees is how the appropriations package affects the federal pay raise for the rest of the year.

At the end of December, President Joe Biden enacted a 5.2% average federal pay raise for most employees on the General Schedule.

Federal employees will continue to receive their higher pay rates that first took effect in January. But the funding will have to come from existing budgets, which may stretch agencies’ spending somewhat thin.

Of course, there are several other key areas where agencies will see spending differences under the new minibus.

Pay for federal wildland firefighters

Unlike the flat or reduced budgeting that many agencies will see under the new minibus, federal wildland firefighters at both the Interior Department and the U.S. Forest Service will be getting more secure resources.

As Congress ran down the clock for reaching spending agreements over the last several months, the frontline employees have come to the edge of a pay cliff many times over.

Now, the 2024 Interior, Environment and Related Agencies appropriations bill maintains a higher pay rate for federal wildland firefighters.

Firefighters first received a pay boost in 2022 as part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Under the infrastructure law, federal firefighters received either $20,000 or 50% of their annual base salary, whichever number was lower.

In addition to maintaining that raise, the minibus keeps current staffing levels for federal firefighters as well.

Advocates of federal firefighters, including the National Federation of Federal Employees, said they were “pleased” with the outcome — and are now setting their sights on future developments for the frontline workforce.

“For months, these selfless men and women have had to live with the possibility of their pay being cut in half overnight,” NFFE National President Randy Erwin said in a statement. “We can now further focus our attention on passing a permanent base pay increase through supplemental legislation.”

Some senators have already started pushing for a permanent pay raise for firefighters as well, under a bill called the Wildland Firefighter Paycheck Protection Act.

A hiring surge for FAA

Employees at the Federal Aviation Administration will also see some added support as part of the appropriations minibus.

The package, under the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development and Related Agencies bill, provides just over $20 billion for FAA. It’s an increase of about $1 billion from the agency’s funding for fiscal 2023.

Roughly $12.7 billion of the funding will go toward a hiring surge for the agency. If the legislation is enacted, FAA will have the funding to hire an additional 1,800 controllers to try to stave off staffing loss due to retiring employees.

Resources from the minibus will also go toward improving training facilities for air traffic controllers and enhancing IT and telecommunications systems.

Additionally, nearly $3.2 billion will be put toward improving FAA facilities and equipment. About $3.9 billion will go toward grants aiming to reduce airport emissions, build new infrastructure at airports and more.

Cuts to spending for EPA, NSF

Although federal firefighters and FAA employees will see stabilized or increased resources, many agencies are simultaneously facing budget cuts under the minibus.

The Environmental Protection Agency will take one of the larger funding cuts as part of the appropriations package.

The minibus provides EPA with just under $9.2 billion — roughly $1 billion less than EPA’s enacted 2023 budget of more than $10.1 billion.

House Republicans were particularly focused on implementing budget reductions for EPA and touted the 9.6% cut included in the package as a success.

But the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents about 7,700 EPA employees, expressed major dissatisfaction with the funding decrease for 2024.

“At a time of climate emergency, the agency budget should be increased, not slashed,” Marie Owens Powell, president of AFGE Council 238, which represents EPA employees, said in a statement Monday. “Our work is mounting … Congress must restore EPA funding in fiscal 2025 and we will continue to raise our voices to make sure it does.”

The minibus, however, maintains current staffing levels across all of EPA’s components. In total, EPA has about 15,100 employees.

At the same time, EPA has been pushing for a hiring surge through separate funding from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act. The agency initially planned to add another 1,000 employees to its roster this year, but its appropriations may now impact the end number.

Along with EPA, the National Science Foundation and NASA will also take hits to their 2024 appropriations.

The minibus gives NSF about $9 billion for the fiscal year, which is $479 million below the 2023 enacted level, and $2.3 billion below the budget request.

NASA will get about $24.5 billion, which is just about $509 million below the enacted level and $2.3 billion below the budget request.

Stagnating pay, staffing at Bureau of Prisons

For salaries and expenses for several Justice Department components — the FBI, U.S. Marshals Service (USMS), Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and U.S. Attorneys — the appropriations committees approved a $19.1 billion budget. That’s $1.4 billion below the budget request for 2024.

In total, DOJ will receive a discretionary total of $37.5 billion, representing a significant decrease from last year’s enacted amount. DOJ’s new topline number is $977 million below 2023 funding, and a $3.8 billion departure from the budget request.

On its own, the FBI will see a 6% budget cut. And the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) will have their budget reduced by 7% for the fiscal year, according to the minibus.

Perhaps most significantly, the Bureau of Prisons will face budget cuts for the rest of 2024 as well. The minibus includes $8.4 billion for the agency — on par with the fiscal 2023 enacted budget and about $250 million below the White House’s initial proposal for 2024.

While staffing levels and salaries for BOP will remain the same, the agency’s facilities budget will decrease by $180 million, putting it $110 million below the 2023 enacted level. The modest budget comes as BOP continues to face major staffing shortages and attrition challenges.

Brandy Moore White, national president of the AFGE Council of Prison Locals, said she was “extremely disappointed” with the funding proposal.

“Failing to provide the Bureau of Prisons with the funding it desperately needs to address staffing, safety and security issues will make it even harder for employees to do their jobs and make our prisons more dangerous environments both for employees and inmates,” Moore said in a statement.

AFGE National President Everett Kelley said while the union appreciates Congress pushing forward with an actual spending agreement, rather than another continuing resolution, the minibus is “at best an effort to tread water.”

“The six spending bills before Congress this week are far better than the partisan bills the House considered last year, which sought cuts of 20% or more from key programs,” Kelley said in a statement. “At the same time, the appropriations process remains fundamentally flawed. The fiscal year is already half over. Moreover, the inflexible spending targets imposed by the Fiscal Responsibility Act have resulted in damaging freezes and reductions to many vital federal programs.”

The post 6-bill minibus rewards some agencies, while slashing budgets for others first appeared on Federal News Network.

Fresh off a 5% pay raise, federal employees can look forward to some other enhancements coming their way, like the possibility of another hefty pay raise next year. For more on this and a few other matters, the Federal Drive with Tom spoke with John Hatton, the vice president for Policy and Programs at the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association (NARFE).

Interview Transcript: 

Tom Temin And let’s talk about the FAIR Act federal pay rate increase for 2025. This is kind of a perennial where they look for not double digits but high single digits.

John Hatton Yeah. And so this is kind of a marker for members of Congress pushing for federal pay raises. In this case, Congressman Gerry Connolly(D-Va.) in the House and Senator Schatz (D-Hawaii) in the Senate. And I would say this is more of a negotiating tool for them in terms of trying to put this marker down as you get into the appropriations season. So the federal pay raise is typically based off of the most recent change in the employment cost index for private sector wages and salaries. So if you’re looking at that ended in 2023, it’s 4.5%. That’s typically reduced down by half a percent down to four for that across the board pay increase. That’s probably what you’re going to expect to see in Biden’s budget. If they’re looking to keep that same pay rate policy going forward, that they include a certain amount in this case, in recent cases, 0.5% for locality pay. The Fair act says, let’s go a little bit higher on locality pay, there’s a large pay gap between federal employee pay, similar private sector jobs of 27%. So they’re looking for a 3.4% increase in locality instead of that point five percentage point increase.

Tom Temin And locality is spreading like wildfire in some sense to every year there are new regions. And you wonder how did that get to be a locality pay. It’s harder to find places that aren’t locality pay.

John Hatton Yeah, there’s still this general breast of US locality pay, which actually also increases from the base to an extent different geographic areas continue to be above that, you’re going to have these new locality pay areas crop up. But certainly in large metropolitan areas, whether it’s San Francisco or New York or in the DC area, people are paid more because the cost of living is higher and wages are higher. So it is good policy, I think, to adjust pay for what the market rate is in that area.

Tom Temin And what is the latest thinking on whether federal employees are paid more or less than their counterparts in the private sector? I’ve always felt that, yes, some of them are underpaid. Some of them are actually better than the private sector. I don’t think there’s any single index that makes any sense because of the range of jobs involved.

John Hatton Yeah, what the federal government uses is the Federal Salary Council. And they try to match job to job, similar private sector jobs with the federal jobs and come up with some percentage difference, which is supposed to inform the changes in locality pay. And they found that taking that all in aggregate, there’s a 27% difference where the private sector gets paid more than federal jobs. Now, that’s not taking into account benefits. The Congressional Budget Office has looked at this before, they look at less of a job to job comparison and more of a human capital approach. So people with similar experience, people of similar educational backgrounds and what are they getting paid? And they find kind of the most educated in the federal workforce are paid less than their private sector counterparts. But if you get down to the lower educational levels, they’re actually paid a little bit more when you’re taking into account benefits and everything else. So depends on how you’re analyzing it, it’s complicated, but I think certainly there are plenty of cases where pay needs to go up to be competitive with the private sector in recruitment.

Tom Temin And in the last couple of years, you’ve probably noticed, as we have, that lots of agencies are getting spot authority to offer extra pay, extra benefits, extra hiring eases for strategically important jobs they might need. It’s fairly widespread, though.

John Hatton Yeah, I think that’s one of the justifications for the Fair Act or trying to close that locality pay gap is how much agencies are pushing for these special pay authorities so that they can actually recruit people, because what is being provided under the basic or general schedule system isn’t enough. So I don’t know if any one year that locality pay increase is going to be 27%, but little inches of work would help prevent kind of these situations where agencies are really struggling to recruit people because their pay is low.

Tom Temin Especially in an age when a pack of potato chips at the grocery store is five bucks. We’re speaking with John Hatton, vice president for policy and programs at the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association, NARFE. And the OPM data breach, this was back in 2015 kids, but it still resonates, doesn’t it? And there is something that would extend protection for people’s identities continuing. Tell us what’s going on there.

John Hatton Yeah. So just as a reminder, people, OPM allowed their database to be breached and personally identifiable information was revealed. Now, Congress responded to that by providing identity theft protection up to $5 million in insurance, but only for like the next ten years when they include it in appropriations bill. So there’s an effort to extend that information is out there hasn’t been put back in the box. So people may still need that protection resulting from that breach. So Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC.) introduced a bill to extend it. I think this will probably get a little bit more attention as we get closer to that expiration date, but it’s just a reminder to people that, yes, your data still may be out there, you still may need some of this protection and it should be the obligation of the federal government which gave it away to provide you with that identity theft protection.

Tom Temin The strange thing about that data is that it never did manifest itself in any obvious way. There wasn’t some big giant phishing attack that hit a million federal employees or anything. No one really knew what happened to it or where it went, or if it ever was used in some manner.

John Hatton Yeah, I think it’s probably difficult to actually parse out whether, if you do have some identity theft or fraud attack on you, if it came from that OPM data breach or a target breach or something else, there’s data hacks all over the place. OPM is not the only place to be exposed in this realm, so I think the danger becomes when people can collect data from multiple sources and starts piecing together and piecing together, and they get a much clearer picture of you and your identity and how you operate the one piece of data or the one attack may not be itself the most, but certainly is relevant in this case.

Tom Temin And the other thing about such data, it does go stale because people change jobs, they move and so forth. So you got to act quick on it, especially if you’re going to launch a phishing attack based on what you know about that person at that moment.

John Hatton True, and some of that is email addresses. But I think in this case you’re talking about Social Security numbers, CSA numbers, just identities and addresses. Now, if you’ve moved and certainly there was concerns about people who were in intelligence agencies, people whose identities has been protected based on their top secret clearances or otherwise.

Tom Temin And eventually you retire and then you worry about pharmacy benefits and Medicare Part D haven’t had the pleasure of navigating those shoals yet, but it’s complicated. But now there is a bipartisan bill that would help with Medicare Part D and drug costs.

John Hatton Yeah. The House Committee on Oversight and Accountability advanced a bill that applies the FEHB. That was their jurisdiction. This was also going through energy and commerce and ways and means as to take it up as well. And it’s just an effort, and it’s nice to see some bipartisanship on this issue of drug pricing. And that would apply to federal retirees through FEHB. And now that more plans are integrating with Medicare Part D through that as well, and just prohibit some practices like the PBMs, negotiate drug prices, and they may get rebates, but they may not pass that rebate on to you as a consumer or the insurance companies that you’re paying the premiums for those claims, they made insure you to different pharmacies so you can’t go to the pharmacy you want. So some common sense legislation, getting at some drug pricing and getting at some of these practices that reduce your choice. So it’s good to see some bipartisanship, even in the midst of a very partizan environment, that some business can still get done and some improvements can still be made.

Tom Temin Yeah, that idea of the pharmacy benefits manager, I guess it had a good theory in that someone third party would argue with drug companies and get prices down, but it’s kind of turned into a profit center, almost, where the savings don’t necessarily get passed on to the actual buyer.

John Hatton Right now, they have an incentive to negotiate and get lower prices, but they don’t have the incentive to necessarily pass that on to the consumer as thoroughly as they should or could.

The post Are federal employees headed for another big raise next year? first appeared on Federal News Network.

The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) held a rally Tuesday, calling lawmakers to give the federal workforce a 7.4% average pay raise this year.

AFGE is backing the pay raise proposed by Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) and Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) in the Federal Adjustment of Income Rates (FAIR) Act they introduced last month.

AFGE National President Everett Kelley told bargaining unit employees at the rally on Capitol Hill that it is “past time for federal employees to receive what they are due, for hard work and service to the American people.”

Kelley also urged lawmakers to “keep the government open [and] keep the government serving the American people.”

“This is the most basic function of Congress,” Kelley said.

Congress passed a continuing resolution last month to avert a partial government shutdown and extend funding for federal agencies through March.

It’s the third stopgap funding bill lawmakers have passed since the start of the fiscal year.

Under the current “laddered” continuing resolution, funding for some federal agencies will run out on March 1. Others have annual appropriations to last through March 8.

Democratic lawmakers echoed AFGE”s demand for higher federal employee pay, and urged their colleagues to avoid a government shutdown in March.

Rep. Glenn Ivey (D-Md.) said a pay raise on par with the FAIR Act has been “long overdue,” and he would “make sure that you all get the pay raise that you deserve.”

Connolly and Schatz have reintroduced the FAIR Act in Congress for 10 consecutive years, although lawmakers have never acted on any version of the bill.

The lawmakers and federal employee unions say the FAIR Act would help bring federal salaries in line with those of the private sector.

According to the Federal Salary Council, federal employees’ pay lagged about 27.5% behind that of private sector workers in 2023.

About 57% of feds say they’re happy with their pay — a 10% decline in just the last three years, according to the results of the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey (FEVS) from the Office of Personnel Management.

Rep. Val Hoyle (D-Ore.) said federal employees and the agencies they work for aren’t getting the financial resources they need.

“One job should be enough. And then, [to] not give you staff, and blame you when things start breaking, it is not right. You’re expected to show up at your jobs, even when government is shut down and you’re not getting paid,” Hoyle said.

Rep. Nikki Budzinski (D-Ill.) told the crowd she also supports the FAIR Act.

“You work hard every day. You deserve the pay at the end of the day for the work that you’ve done, and you don’t make enough, you can count on me to do my job to raise your wage by 7.4%,” Budzinski said.

Budzinski, a member of the House Veteran Affairs Committee, said VA employees are “asked to do so much and not given enough to do your very important jobs for our men and women that have served.”

She said she would also oppose a fiscal commission that would “cut your pay and benefits and reduce the impact the workforce that we have that we so desperately need.”

AFGE and 116 House lawmakers oppose the creation of a fiscal commission, as proposed by a bill that passed out of the House Budget Committee in January.

AFGE says the commission would hold “enormous power to recommend cuts to Social Security and other popular programs without any ability for the public to weigh in.” The union opposes efforts to attach the fiscal commission bill to the fiscal 2024 spending deal.

Union officials and lawmakers are also pushing to ensure agencies receive enough annual funding from Congress to continue to meet their mission.

AFGE is calling for $20 billion in supplemental funding for the Social Security Administration over the next 10 years. The funding proposal, modeled after what the IRS recently received to rebuild its workforce and modernize legacy IT, would give SSA about $2 billion each year.

Rich Couture, the chief negotiator for AFGE Council 215, told Federal News Network the funding is “what we need in order to put our agency back on track and to provide the American public with the service that they deserve.”

“More and more work keeps getting dumped on fewer and fewer employees, which is creating a lot of stress for those workers. When you combine that with our lack of competitive pay and benefits, it is inducing a lot of our workers to leave, either through retiring earlier than they would have planned, or to find work with other federal agencies or with other employers, where the pay, the benefits, the telework are better,” Couture said.

Couture said SSA’s staff has “declined precipitously” since 2010, even though it’s seen a 17% increase in beneficiaries during the same period of time.

He added that short-staffing at the agency may have contributed to the agency’s discovery last fall that it made $23 billion in overpayments, and is looking to claw back those overpayments.

“We simply do not have the people to stay on top of those changes timely to make sure that they’re getting paid the right amount at the right time,” Couture said.

Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas), a freshman member of Congress, recalled that his first vote in the House last year was a bill to roll back multi-year funding for the IRS under the Inflation Reduction Act.

While Congress is looking at a comprehensive spending bill that would mostly lock in current agency spending levels, Casar said the “money” is there to ensure federal employees get a substantial pay raise.

“We know the money is there to pay the everyday person that is doing the work of protecting this country. That meat doesn’t get inspected on its own. Those workplaces don’t get kept safe on their own. People don’t get their Social Security check on their own. That health care is something that people fought for and built in this U.S. Congress, but you deliver it, and it’s time for the U.S. Congress to do our job,” Casar said.

The post AFGE rallies for 7.4% federal employee pay raise, spending deal to avoid government shutdown   first appeared on Federal News Network.