DAILY BRIEFING
Employees win $232 million
pay settlement
The government has agreed to pay $232.5 million to as many as 70,000 present and former federal employees to resolve a long-standing dispute over annual cost-of-living raises, the Associated Press reported.
Federal workers in Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and Guam will be entitled to a share of the money, the Justice Department said Friday.
The workers had sued the government, saying the annual process of establishing COLA rates have not adequately taken into account special factors related to their remote locations, such as higher travel costs. Also, the government agreed to use a new formula to calculate future COLAs for workers outside the 48 contiguous states.
In the settlement, the government agreed to retroactively increase the increases those workers have received since October 1990. The government also agreed to use a new formula to calculate future raises for such workers.
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