Impasses panel takes up SEC pay dispute

An independent panel has taken up a dispute over pay raises between the Securities and Exchange Commission and the union that represents SEC employees. A member of the Federal Service Impasses Panel, a seven-person independent board that helps agencies and unions resolve disagreements, will try to work out a compromise over the raises during informal meetings at the beginning of September. The National Treasury Employees Union contends that the SEC is giving 60 percent of a $25 million special pay raise pool to managers and other nonunion employees, even though they make up only 40 percent of the workforce. The union is also challenging the SEC's plans for a new pay-for-performance system. NTEU President Colleen Kelley said the new system gives too much power to managers and does not lay out clear criteria for rating employees. SEC employees will still get the special raises while the dispute is before the panel. SEC spokesman Brian Gross said both nonunion and bargaining unit employees will receive average pay increases of 14 percent in their Aug. 16 paychecks. They will also get lump-sum payments in those paychecks because the raises are retroactive to May 19. Congress granted the SEC the power to create its own pay system in January, after SEC officials complained for years that they were losing 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, which offer higher salaries for similar work. Kelley said the panel's decision to take up the dispute is good for employees. "This will help ensure that any resolution, either between the parties or as a result of a panel order, can be implemented promptly, and without risking the types of problems that might ensue if this dispute were to drag into the next fiscal year," she said in a statement. Gross said SEC officials are looking forward to working through the issues with the impasses panel and the union.