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Washington, D.C.—Senate approval of the fiscal 2002 Treasury, Postal and General Government Appropriations Bill containing a 4.6 percent pay increase for federal civilian workers mirrors earlier action on pay by the House in its version of the funding bill and reflects the important contributions to the nation of its federal workforce, the leader of the largest independent union of federal employees said today.

The Senate bill also makes permanent a pilot program of child care tuition assistance for federal families, a matter that will have to be reconciled with the House version of the bill, which continues the tuition assistance program on a temporary basis. President Colleen M. Kelley of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) said NTEU would continue to urge that the final funding bill make the child care tuition assistance program permanent.

“A fair and competitive pay increase is absolutely critical in helping recruit and retain the quality employees the public needs in government service,” Kelley said, adding that the child care tuition assistance program “has proven its value time and again” since it was begun on a pilot basis two years ago.

The administration has proposed a lesser pay increase of 3.6 percent for federal civilian employees, while continuing to recommend at least 4.6 percent for members of the military, a step that would break a long tradition of federal civilian-military pay increases.

Kelley said the recent terrorist attacks affecting New York, Washington and Pennsylvania “have helped to show people not just in America but around the world that civil servants at every level of government are decent, hard-working men and women, committed to doing a good job no matter the circumstances.”

Over the past week, Kelley said, “federal employees have more than shown that in a crisis, they are the ones who will be there to deliver for the public.”

While these attacks have generated, for now, an increased interest in public service, Kelley said she “remains concerned” that the underlying problems of recruiting and retaining the kind of talented, dedicated

employees that government needs, “and in particular, in the numbers in which we will need them in coming years,” remain to be addressed.

Besides increasing respect for public service, Kelley said, “the best way” to recruit and retain the kind of people the American public needs to provide the wide range of vital services necessary in our modern society is by paying a fair and competitive salary. Failure to do so, the NTEU president said, “runs an unacceptable and unnecessary risk for our nation.”

NTEU represents some 150,000 employees in 25 agencies and departments.