Defense plan prompts call for higher executive pay
Advocate for senior leaders says salary ceilings should be raised to attract top talent to an expanded list of high-level civilian jobs.
A Defense Department plan to open some jobs currently held by military generals to civilian leaders could create exciting opportunities, but the department and government as a whole must do more to make the Senior Executive Service attractive, the president of a professional group said on Tuesday.
"While we applaud the plans of DoD to expand leadership opportunities for career senior executives, the move illustrates the problems inherent in the SES pay system," Senior Executives Association President Carol Bonosaro said. "Congress and the next administration will ultimately have to address the need to raise the SES pay cap if we are to continue to attract and retain the caliber of career leadership the federal government needs."
In October 2007, Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England signed a directive creating an executive advisory board to review 200 noncombat jobs to determine if they could be performed by civilians. The board will open up around 100 of those positions in September.
The board also will standardize senior executive pay across the department. Previously, Defense organizations set their own pay scales. The SES now will be paid in three tiers, with top salaries in the first capped at $158,500, those in the second set at $166,000 and those in the third at $172,200. The third-tier ceiling matches that for senior executives in civilian agencies with SES pay-for-performance systems that have been certified by the Office of Personnel Management.
Defense executives who are reassigned to a tier with a salary ceiling below their current earnings won't have to take a pay cut. Instead, they will receive only half their pay increases in the future, for as long as it takes for the caps catch up to their salary. This system is designed to eventually bring all executives in a given tier within the same salary range.
Under the new salary ranges, the top-earning Defense civilians would be making less than the highest paid generals. Basic pay for generals, who are 0-10 officers on the military pay scale, ranges from $141,370 with 20 years of service to $173,832 for those with 40 or more years of service. In addition, members of the military also receive housing, family separation and clothing allowances, and generals collect a personal allowance each month.
It is also possible that Defense executives could earn less than the employees they supervise. Bonosaro said at hearing last week on the state of pay-for-performance in federal agencies that this could dissuade talented employees from entering the SES. If Executive Schedule and General Schedule pay increased at the same rate, she said, the top pay for senior executives would be $226,859, or $54,659 more than the current ceiling.
Defense's new tiers, and a similar system at the Veterans Affairs Department, "at worst, threaten to create pay compression anew as executives reach the caps for their tiers and, at best, require clarity and transparency with regard to the criteria for placement within a tier and for promotion to the next tier," Bonosaro told members of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on the Federal Workforce.