One Way to Deal With Pay Retention

I wrote about this last week, but obviously there's a lot of concern out there among folks who are going to be placed on so-called pay retention as part of the transition out of the National Security Personnel System. The folks subject to the holding pens are those whose salaries grew beyond the limits they would have lived under based on their job description under the General Schedule. They'll receive half of the raises their coworkers receive until their salaries fall back into the GS grade they are assigned to by virtue of their duties. From an interview with the new president of the Federal Managers Association, it sounds like the organization's strategy will be to argue that their employees' duties expanded as their salaries increased, and that they should be reclassified as a result. Patricia Niehaus told Federal Times:

We're focusing mainly on encouraging managers to ensure their position descriptions and those of their subordinates are appropriately classified because a lot of people under NSPS went into it with a particular position description, but their positions and their duties and responsibilities have grown dramatically over the past three or four years. So a lot of those positions may not have appropriate classifications under the [General Schedule] system.... [an employee's job] may be a higher graded position now. So we're encouraging [the Pentagon] to look at the actual classification of the position to ensure that it's accurately reflecting the current duties and responsibilities of the position.