Pay increase may be larger than anticipated

Federal employees who have been hoping for a larger pay increase in 1999 may see their wishes come true.

The House National Security Committee voted last week to include a provision in the 1999 Defense Authorization Act that would increase pay for military service members by 3.6 percent. Civilian pay increases have historically been linked to the military raise.

Citing a concern that low pay has eroded the services' ability to recruit and retain a quality workforce, the committee opted to endorse the raise, which is 0.5 percent higher than that proposed by President Clinton.

Committee Chairman Floyd Spence, R-S.C., said the additional increase would provide a military pay raise equal to that of raises in the private sector and would "freeze the pay gap at its current level."

The Senate Armed Services Committee, in its version of the bill, followed Clinton's lead and voted for a 3.1 percent increase.

The full House and Senate must still approve their respective bills, negotiate a compromise version and approve that version before presenting it to Clinton.

Clinton has until August to change his suggested pay raise amount.

The 1990 Federal Employees Pay Comparability Act, which aims to close the pay gap between the federal and private sectors, calls for a raise of almost 13 percent in 1999. However, the law contains a provision that allows the President to propose less than the maximum amount during poor economic conditions.

Earlier this year, federal labor union leaders asked the Clinton administration to consider proposing 6 percent raises for federal workers in 1999 and 2000. In a letter sent to the Office of Personnel Management, they asked the administration to adopt an approach that would give recognition to "the fact that federal employees are performing more agency missions with 300,000 fewer employees."

The most recent studies show that federal pay lags an average of 24 percent behind non-federal pay, despite FEPCA's goal of closing the pay gap by 2002. The Clinton administration has questioned the methodology used to compute the pay gap.