Pay Parity

Over the past week and a half, you all have been engaged in a fairly intense debate both here, and in comments on some stories about the pay raise, and how big, or small, or non-existent it ought to be. As far as I can tell, your positions break down into a couple of categories:

Position 1: The economy is terrible. Our private-sector counterparts are in huge trouble. We should be thankful for our job stability, and shouldn't expect raises at all. If we get them, we should be grateful.

Position 2: While we are doing a lot of hard work, especially given the government's increased role in managing the economic crisis, our colleagues in the military are in danger. We deserve our cost-of-living raises, but pushing for pay parity at this time makes light of their sacrifices.

Position 3: We have this debate every year. I thought Obama was committed to doing things different. Pay parity should be part of that change.

Position 4: We deserve a larger raise considering how fast our health care premiums rise.

Position 5: Yes, there's a recession. Yes, our private-sector counterparts are getting hit extremely hard. But that doesn't eliminate the pay gap between comparable occupations in the public and private sector, and it doesn't eliminate the government's mandate to try to close the gap. This is an opportunity for us to become more competitive.

There are variations on all of these arguments, of course. And I'm not going to side with any one of them, but I did want to put some kudos out there for the breadth of discussion, and encourage all of you to continue debating. Colleen Kelley joked at the NTEU legislative conference earlier this week that the pay debate is kind of a year-round cycle; the president puts out a potential pay raise in February, and it gets codified in late December. Maybe we'll still be discussing this at Christmastime, but hopefully things will get settled before then.