Pentagon issues pay tables for new personnel system

The Defense Department released the official pay tables Friday for its new personnel system, which is in place for 11,000 employees and is slated to eventually cover 700,000 civilian workers.

The pay tables for the National Security Personnel System represent a monumental shift from the decades-old General Schedule compensation system for federal employees. In place of the 15-grade pay ladder, the new tables have broad paybands with large salary ranges divided by occupation.

Separated by four career groups -- standard, medical, investigative and protective services, and scientific and engineering -- the bands are based on the General Schedule, although the upper pay limits exceed those in the current system.

The standard career group, which will include the majority of Defense employees, has three pay bands for its professional/analytical workers. Payband 1 ranges from $25,195 to $60,049, not including a substantial local market supplement. That is equivalent to a GS-5, Step 1, up to a GS-11, Step 10.

But Payband 3, the highest band in that group, ranges from $74,608 to $124,904, which exceeds the $118,957 top of General Schedule for GS-15, Step 10.

The biggest shift from the General Schedule model, according to NSPS spokeswoman Joyce Frank, is in the supervisory paybands.

Supervisors' pay ranges begin at a higher level than their professional/analytical counterparts under NSPS. Payband 1, for example, for supervisors in the standard career group ranges from $31,209 to $60,049.

The pay tables, with their broad pay ranges, are too vague, said J. Ward Morrow, assistant general counsel for the American Federation of Government Employees. Workers have no idea where in those ranges they will fall upon conversion to the system, he said.

"Certainly, if everyone who goes in there gets the top of the band, that might be good," Morrow said. "If everybody goes in there and gets the bottom, that would be bad. There's utter confusion in the worksite over what this means."

The 11,000 employees now being paid under these pay tables do not belong to bargaining units. Many of the thousands of Defense workers scheduled to enter in later rounds belong to unions such as AFGE, and Morrow said before those employees enter, the department will have to collaborate with unions over implementing the pay system.

The tables were released in addition to hundreds of pages of finalized documents, called implementing issuances, that provide details of the working of NSPS.

Those documents remain largely unchanged even after required collaboration with unions, according to Matt Biggs, spokesman for the coalition of Defense Department unions that sued the department over the provisions of NSPS cutting back on collective bargaining rights.

"Not that much has changed," Biggs said. "It's pretty much the same old operation from the DoD. We did give them plenty of suggestions but they didn't seem to incorporate many, if any."

But Frank, the NSPS spokeswoman, said the department did incorporate some union suggestions, although many of them were "editorial or clarifying in nature."

As an example of a significant change prompted by union concerns, Frank offered up the authority for special pay increases. Unions, she said, were concerned that managers could use special pay increase authorities to raid the general pool of money for pay raises for the benefit of a favored few. So the Pentagon changed the rules so the special pay increases can only be given from funding sources outside the general pay pool.

Biggs said his group is shifting its focus to negotiations over pay in the coming months as more employees are scheduled to move into NSPS.