The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) last week took a huge step toward aligning the locality pay maps for employees on the Federal Wage System and General Schedule as recommended by the Federal Prevailing Rate Advisory Committee (FPRAC) whose members include two AFGE representatives.
OPM’s proposed rule was published in the Federal Register with a 60-day public comment period. Once finalized, about 15,000 blue collar workers, most of whom work for the Department of Defense, will get the pay adjustment they deserve.
“This is a sweet victory that was a long time coming – too long—but I am thrilled that our efforts have finally paid off,” said AFGE President Everett Kelley, who is a member of the committee along with AFGE Public Policy Director Jacque Simon.
AFGE’s two-decade fight
AFGE has been working for more than two decades to get successive administrations, both Republican and Democratic, to align FWS wage areas with GS locality pay areas across the country. Even though they work side-by-side in the same building for the same employer, the base pay has been determined differently for the two groups. Salaried workers have the same base pay throughout a GS locality, while hourly WG workers have had base pay that has varied even within the boundaries of a GS locality.
The GS locality boundaries are drawn according to commuting rates, which is the proper way to define local labor markets. Hourly workers’ locality or wage area boundaries were drawn mostly in the 1950s, reflecting the location of large military installations that employed most federal WG workers at that time.
Since 2002, AFGE has worked every year to get OPM to issue a regulation that would align the two pay systems’ area boundaries, so both systems would be governed by commuting rates. But our efforts faced staunch opposition from DoD and various administrations. Opponents complained about cost and necessity, while we argued, correctly, that the cost was negligible compared to the cost of constant turnover and training. We also emphasized the issue of equity and the negative impact on morale that this continuing inequity imposed.
We also repeatedly asked Congress to introduce bills that would mandate equal pay boundaries between the two pay systems, but they didn’t advance because too few lawmakers had Wage Grade employees in their districts who would benefit from the change.
AFGE never gave up on this fight. We managed to get language in a defense authorization bill that instructed OPM to fix the issue, and that made a big difference. AFGE also got a firm commitment from then presidential candidate Joe Biden to fix the inequity. We still faced stiff opposition from DoD, but we finally succeeded in getting everyone to fix the problem.
AFGE is extremely proud of our accomplishment on this issue for Wage Grade employees in addition to another big accomplishment 20 years ago when we succeeded in getting language in every year’s appropriations bill giving all Wage Grade employees the exact same annual pay adjustment as their GS counterparts who work in the same location. Previously, many Wage Grade employees got a smaller raise because Congress for decades has prevented WG pay to rise by more than the average GS raise but had never insisted on any kind of minimum raise. AFGE added a floor to the ceiling which resulted in all WG employees receiving the same annual pay adjustment as their GS coworkers within each GS locality.
Submit comments on the proposed rule
The rule will be available for public inspection on Monday Oct. 7, but the 60-day period doesn’t start until Friday, Oct. 11.
AFGE urges members to submit comments in support of the proposed rule. Just go to the rule’s page and click on the green “Submit a Formal Comment” button in the right corner.