Exec Pay Hike Urged

The Senior Executives Association, which represents senior federal managers, has recommended that Senior Executive Service Members, Senior Level and Senior Technical executives and Boards of Contracts Appeals Judges be included in nationwide pay comparability and locality-pay adjustments for 1997 that other federal employees are already slated to receive next year.

President Clinton announced late last month that federal employees under the General Schedule would receive comparability and locality-pay raises averaging a total of
3 percent next year.

"The imposition of greater demands on career executive leadership for reinventing government, at the same time that career executive ranks have been thinned, makes inclusion in both pay adjustments especially compelling," said SEA President Carol Bonosaro.

SEA also released the results of a survey it commissioned by the Hay Group, a human resource management consulting firm, showing that the cash compensation for private-sector executives is between 46 percent and 137 percent higher than for their counterparts in comparable positions in the federal government. When the value of benefits -- which are generally more valuable in government -- are taken into consideration, the compensation gap ranged from 46.5 percent to 70 percent.

The President's "pay agent" -- made up of the Labor Secretary and the directors of the Office of Personnel Management and the Office of Management and Budget -- must decide by the end of the year whether senior executives will get locality pay adjustments next year. The President must decide on comparability adjustments.

Members of Congress, in a statement included in the conference report on the 1997 Treasury, Postal Service and General Government Appropriations Bill for 1997, urged the Clinton Administration to provide both comparability and locality-pay increases for senior executives next year.