Don't Expect President's Budget Plan to Do Much to Close the Pay Gap

[AmericanErrorist]

President Bush's budget blueprint goes to Congress on Monday and will include the administration's recommendation for a 2007 federal
employee pay raise. It's a safe bet that the proposal will fall short of filling the "pay gap."

The gap is a percentage measurement showing, as an average, how much federal pay lags behind the private sector.

According to an administration report, a raise of 13.37 percent would be needed to close the pay gap, as defined by a 1990 law.

The report, recently released, comes from the president's pay advisers: Elaine L. Chao , secretary of labor; Joshua B. Bolten , director of the Office of Management and Budget; and Linda M. Springer , director of the Office of Personnel Management.

The administration's report compares rates of pay under the General Schedule, the government's largest pay system, with rates of pay for nonfederal employees performing the same levels of work. The methodology to make the calculations has been faulted over the years, and OPM and the Bureau of Labor Statistics continue to refine the data used to arrive at pay disparities.

...In the report, Chao, Bolten and Springer tell the president that it "would be unwise" to try and close the pay gap in 2007. They call for "fundamental reforms of the white-collar federal pay system" and recommend consideration of alternative systems that more closely link pay raises to an employee's occupation and job performance.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/02/AR2006020202570_2.html?referrer=email