Federal Employees in Two Cities in Line for Bigger Pay Raises

The Federal Salary Council on Friday voted to give two new regions their own locality pay rates starting in 2018, amounting to a pay increase for federal workers in those areas.

San Antonio, Texas, and Birmingham, Ala., would receive their own locality designations under the newly approved plan, rather than being grouped in the “rest of U.S.” category, according to the American Federation of Government Employees, which has two representatives on the salary council. Regions with their own locality pay typically receive higher increases than the “rest of U.S.” areas.

“By moving these workers into their own pay localities, they will start to receive larger locality raises and begin making up some lost ground,” AFGE National President J. David Cox Sr. said in a statement.

The Federal Salary Council is made up of union representatives and pay policy experts, and makes recommendations to the President’s Pay Agent (the secretary of Labor and directors of the Office of Personnel Management and Office of Management and Budget).

Federal workers in San Antonio and Birmingham would join tens of thousands of employees who received a pay boost this year when 13 new locality regions were added.

The council on Friday also asked the President’s Pay Agent to begin the regulatory process for making Burlington, Vt., and Virginia Beach, Va., their own localities, according to AFGE. The council had recommended last year that those regions be separate from the “rest of U.S.”

Civilian federal employees are in line for a 1 percent increase in base pay in 2017, and a 0.6 percent boost in locality pay.