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Washington, D.C.—A nonpartisan government report showing significant improvements in employee pay, benefits and job satisfaction at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) over the past three years “clearly reflects the impact of union representation and a union-negotiated labor agreement,” the leader of the union representing more than 2,000 SEC employees said today.

President Colleen M. Kelley of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) offered her assessment of NTEU’s impact at the agency in the wake of a survey of SEC attorneys, accountants and examiners by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), which updated a 2001 survey of these same employees' views on a variety of important workplace and related issues.

Some 77 percent of employees in these three professional work categories signaled their satisfaction with pay—a jump of 60 percentage points from the 2001 survey. NTEU’s lobbying efforts were instrumental in securing pay parity for these employees with those at other federal financial regulatory agencies.

At the same time, large numbers of SEC employees expressed their satisfaction with their right to apply for flexitime work schedules—an important benefit NTEU secured in the first-ever term labor agreement, along with articles addressing such key matters as part-time employment, travel, training,grievance procedures, equal employment opportunity, leave, transportation subsidies, credit hours, child care tuition assistance, and more.

“There is no question in my mind that substantial improvements in overall job satisfaction and other important quality-of-life measures among SEC employees are directly tied to their decision in 2000 to be represented” by NTEU, President Kelley said.

NTEU successfully organized SEC in 2000, after an 18-month fight with the agency, which conducted a high-profile, fierce battle against the union. NTEU reached its initial term labor agreement with the SEC in the summer of 2002.

The broad issues addressed in both the 2001 and 2004 surveys included compensation, overall job satisfaction, work-life balance, supervision and management, performance appraisal and incentive systems, opportunities for advancement, organizational structure and support, communication within divisions, and training.

Survey respondents this year reported lower levels of satisfaction in the quality of supervision and management’s efforts to communicate work priorities in a timely fashion. Additionally, the survey pointed to dissatisfaction with components of the performance appraisal system. NTEU believes that dissatisfaction is stemming from the portion of the system that determines merit pay for employees and is currently at the bargaining table with the agency trying to improve the system.

NTEU is the largest independent federal union, representing some 150,000 employees in 30 agencies and departments.