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Washington, D.C.—A renewed interest in public service in the wake of the terrorist attacks that rocked the nation likely will be transitory unless and until Congress addresses and repairs the underlying problems of noncompetitive salary and skyrocketing health care costs for federal workers and inadequate funding for their agencies, said the president of the nation’s largest independent union of federal workers.

President Colleen M. Kelley of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) said in testimony submitted to the House Subcommittee on Technology and Procurement Policy that federal agencies “have steadily been losing” the contest with state and local governments and private sector employers for bright, talented, committed employees.

Kelley said that even though today’s hearing had been convened to explore the need for better pay, recruitment and retention strategies for information technology and acquisition workforces, NTEU believes that “the very same factors that prevent individuals from seeking federal employment in these fields prevent qualified applicants from seeking federal employment in general.”

“What still must be addressed,” Kelley said, “is the pay gap facing the rest of the federal workforce.” Despite the bipartisan Federal Employees Pay Comparability Act (FEPCA), which was enacted in 1990 and was designed to close in stages over 10 years the public-private pay gap, in some parts of the country today the pay gap is as high as 30 percent. That reflects the utter failure of the government to implement FEPCA.

“For most prospective employees,” Kelley said, “the most critical element in deciding whether or not to accept a job is salary. Yet, the administration continues to press for only a 3.6 percent raise for federal employees in 2002. This is not reflective of an administration that takes the human capital crisis seriously.” Kelley has been the leader in the fight for the highest possible 2002 pay raise for federal civilian employees. Both the Senate and House have passed Treasury, Postal Appropriations Bills calling for a 4.6 percent raise in 2002.

To some degree, she said, pay problems affecting entry and developmental level information technology workers have been addressed over the past year, particularly when the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) established higher basic pay rates, providing raises of between 7 and 33 percent, for several IT specialties, including computer engineers, computer scientists and computer specialists.

Kelley also called the subcommittee’s attention to the “wealth of flexibilities” available to federal agencies to attract and retain quality employees, including programs that allow agencies to offer retention allowances of up to 25 percent of salary, bonuses of up to 25 percent of pay, performance awards, student loan repayment awards, incentive and bilingual awards, and more.

The problem, Kelley said, is that there is virtually no money available to fund these programs. In fiscal 1998, she said, only one-quarter of one percent of the federal workforce received any form of recruitment, retention or relocation incentive.

“It makes little sense to offer this range of incentives to agencies, encourage them to use them to solve their human capital crises, yet provide them with no money or resources to accomplish the goal,” she told the members of Congress. NTEU represents some 150,000 employees in 25 agencies and departments.