Pay System Causing Turbulence at the FAA
By Stephen Barr/Washington Post
Monday, December 3, 2007
Employees at the Federal Aviation Administration have been operating under a
performance-based pay system for the last decade. Some still don't like it.
Tim O'Hara , a 24-year FAA employee, sent a letter last month to Robert A.
Sturgell , the agency's acting head, listing his complaints with the pay system. He
e-mailed copies to about 1,000 FAA colleagues.
The problems with the pay system, O'Hara wrote, "are both myriad and a
significant depressant on the morale of the FAA workforce. Significant
corrections need to be made."
The FAA will announce its 2008 pay raise for employees in a few weeks, and
O'Hara, a management analyst, acknowledged in an interview that the timing of
his letter is no accident. Complaints about the FAA pay system are nothing new - a group of employees is financing a class-action lawsuit aimed at forcing
changes in pay policies, with O'Hara as the designated plaintiff.
The grass-roots campaign at the FAA underscores the challenges that agencies
face when they overhaul pay rules and try to explain them to employees. During
the past year, employees at the Defense Department and the Government
Accountability Office have questioned whether they will be treated fairly by newly
adopted pay policies and practices.
Proponents of the compensation changes, including numerous Bush
administration officials, contend that linking pay raises to more rigorous
employee appraisals will help boost the agencies' performance. But some
employees in new pay systems, where management has more discretion over
raises, fear that they will fall behind the General Schedule, which covers most
federal employees and has a track record of providing annual raises.
FAA pay policies, however, have proved to be a flash point. The issue has
prompted numerous FAA employees to join unions, including the American
Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, and has drawn fire from
the FAA's largest union, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association.
Because of union contracts, pay practices vary inside the FAA, although the
agency has pushed to include job performance standards in collective bargaining
agreements and in a performance-based pay program, the Core Compensation
System. The core system is supposed to ensure that the agency is competitive in
attracting and keeping employees for its headquarters and field offices.
The core system has drawn criticism from some employees at the top of their pay
scale, or pay band, for their job category. Because they have hit their pay ceiling,
the employees receive their performance-based pay raises as a lump sum rather
than as part of their base pay. More than 9,500 employees fall into this category,
O'Hara estimated.
Under the system's rules, the lump sum does not count toward retirement, a sore
point for many of the employees, including O'Hara. He calculated that he has lost
more than $6,500 a year in pension income because of the core system.
In his letter, O'Hara said the agency's pay-setting process needs to be less
secretive. The FAA uses market surveys to help set salaries but will not share its
methodology for comparing agency jobs to the private sector, O'Hara said.
Hank Price , a FAA spokesman, said the agency sees the aviation and
aerospace industries as the primary labor markets for assessing the
competitiveness of pay for FAA jobs. The agency also studies technology, health
care, government contractors and other federal agencies for pay trends and data,
he said.
The FAA also participates in and buys compensation surveys, which are usually
subject to confidentiality requirements, he said.
Because of the class-action suit, the FAA will not comment on O'Hara's
contention that lump-sum payments and bonuses effectively reduces pensions,
Price said.
The debate over the core system is not the only dispute over pay at the FAA. The
National Air Traffic Controllers Union objects to an agency decision last year to
impose a contract that has slowed the rate of pay increases for current
controllers and cut starting salaries for new hires by 30 percent.
Patrick Forrey , the union president, contends that pay and other changes in
workplace rules have prompted 856 experienced controllers to retire in fiscal
2007 rather than stay in airport towers. "If you thought 2007 was bad for [flight]
delays, just wait until 1,500 more veteran controllers retire between now and the
end of the 2008 summer travel season. It will be worse," Forrey recently said.
FAA officials discount Forrey's remarks, saying that the agency will be able to
hire replacements for retiring controllers and keep the skies safe for travelers.
Officials also said that the contract will save the agency almost $2 billion over five
years and will permit salaries and other benefits for controllers to keep growing.
Still, the feuding over pay and other workplace issues has taken a toll on the
agency, at least as measured in surveys. The FAA ranked 204th out of 222
agencies in a "best places to work" index compiled this year by the nonprofit
Partnership for Public Service and American University's Institute for Public
Policy Implementation.
O'Hara said the FAA brought in an independent team to evaluate the Core
Compensation System but has refused to release the results of a draft report
received a year ago.
"I believe there exists fundamental flaws in the process," he said. "If they want to
have some integrity with the workforce, then weaknesses have to be identified,
corrections have to be made. And this needs to be done."
Stephen Barr's e-mail address is barrs@washpost.com .
"Reprinted from the Washington Post's Federal Diary column by Stephen Barr.
Washingtonpost.com offers a daily e-mail newsletter on events. Sign up at
http://www.wasingtonpost.com"