SEC, union at impasse over new pay plan

Officials with the National Treasury Employees Union are feuding with the Securities and Exchange Commission over a new pay system adopted by the agency two weeks ago after negotiations with the union broke down.

In January, Congress gave the SEC the authority to create its own pay system. SEC officials argued that they needed such a system because they were losing key employees to the private sector and to other federal agencies, such as the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Treasury Department's Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. Those agencies offer higher salaries than the SEC does for similar work.

But when the SEC and NTEU failed to reach an agreement on the specifics of the pay plan earlier this month, the agency decided to move forward with its plan against the union's wishes. NTEU, which represents about 2,000 SEC employees, asked the Federal Service Impasses Panel to step in and resolve the dispute.

According to NTEU president Colleen Kelley, a federal mediator with the panel certified that negotiations are at an impasse. During a rally Thursday at SEC headquarters in Washington, Kelley gave SEC Chairman Harvey Pitt a petition for pay parity signed by nearly 1,000 SEC employees and asked Pitt to send the dispute to arbitration. NTEU argues that the SEC's proposed system disproportionately benefits managers and executives at the expense of front-line employees.

"Apparently, SEC management fears exposing the real impact of its proposals to the light of day," Kelley said, adding that the agency "fails to understand the linkage between pay parity and the ability of this agency to meet the critical need presented to it by the investing public."

SEC declined to comment on the union's proposals, but Pitt said that every SEC employee is "invaluable to the accomplishment of the SEC's important missions."

"That is why I have fought for pay parity and why I have insisted that every penny that is available for pay parity be utilized for the maximum benefits of this agency, those it serves and its employees," Pitt said.

Under the SEC's proposed new pay system, most employees will get a 6 percent base pay increase, plus locality-based increases. Employees in hard-to-fill jobs, such as attorneys, accountants and compliance examiners, will get larger increases. Managers will receive 6 percent higher salaries than non-supervisory employees at the same pay grade.

The new pay system will also strike down within-grade pay increases at the agency. Instead, managers will have more discretion over who gets raises each year.