Not-so-special pay

The 30,000 or so federal technology workers who got special salary hikes of 7 percent to 33 percent in January 2001 discovered this month that their salaries will become less and less special each year. The technology workers got the special raises after the Office of Personnel Management decided that agencies could more easily recruit and retain the in-demand workers if they paid them more. About 140,000 federal workers in 400 hard-to-fill occupations receive special salary rates of varying amounts. By and large, federal workers on special rates received a 3.6 percent pay raise this month. That's the same across-the-board raise that most federal employees received for 2002. But most federal employees also received locality-based pay increases, so that most federal workers in the lower 48 states received pay raises of between 4.52 percent and 5.42 percent this month. Special rate employees don't receive locality-based increases. That is why special salary rates become less and less special each year. Eventually, non-special pay rates catch up with and then surpass the special rates. When regular salaries finally exceed special ones, then special rate employees begin receiving regular pay rates. This oddity of the special salary rate system came as unwelcome news to the technology workers, who experienced its effects for the first time this month. A Los Angeles area technology worker, for example, learned that most federal employees in L.A. would be receiving a 5.12 percent salary increase for 2002. Regular workers at the GS-12, Step 8 level saw their salaries go up from $68,018 to $71,503.

But the GS-12, Step 8 technology worker got only a 3.6 percent increase to her special salary rate, from $71,366 in 2001 to $73,937 in 2002. The technology worker is still making more than her regular-salaried counterparts, but her 2002 special salary is 1.4 percentage points less special than her 2001 salary was in comparison to regular salaries in Los Angeles. Assuming that federal workers receive the same across-the-board and locality-based raises in the coming years, regular federal workers in Los Angeles would make more money than the special salaried workers starting in 2005. If that were to happen, then the L.A.-based technology worker would be put back on the regular General Schedule. Controversy has surrounded special rates since at least the early 1980s. From 1982 to 1988, OPM stopped giving any automatic annual increases to special salary rate employees. After a legal tussle with the National Treasury Employees Union, OPM changed its rule so that special rate employees would get the across-the-board increases, but not the locality-based increases. That change allowed special rates to stay special longer, but it left intact the basic problem that special salary rates lose their edge over time. But that doesn't mean there's no hope for special rate employees. OPM sets special rates at the request of other federal agencies. The other agencies must provide reams of documentation proving that special salary rates would help them attract and retain workers in hard-to-fill jobs and locations. That means that agencies can lobby OPM each year for additional increases above the across-the-board increases. Take the Patent and Trademark Office, for example. Last June, OPM approved special pay increases of about 9.8 percent for 3,500 patent examiners. The patent office requested the increases after reaching a labor agreement with the Patent Office Professionals Association. That agreement requires the patent office to ask OPM for supplemental salary increases each year so that the patent examiners' salaries maintain their edge, according to association president Ronald Stern.

Patent office officials are putting together a request for an additional 1.17 percent increase for patent examiners this year, to make up the difference between the 3.6 percent increase the examiners got in January and the 4.77 percent increase that most employees in the Washington area received. Once the patent office submits its request for the differential, OPM will decide whether the examiners should get the additional increase. Officials at other agencies could make a similar request on behalf of technology workers, if they deem it necessary. New Leave Year For most federal workers, the 2002 leave year began on Sunday, Jan. 13. If you haven't strated tracking your vacation and sick leave, you can download GovExec.com's handy 2002 leave calendar at www.govexec.com/pay/leave2002.htm.