Home Media Center News Releases

Washington, D.C.—The head of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) today said the union filed a motion in federal court asking that the court order the federal government to meet its back pay obligation to a large class of current and former special salary rate employees.

NTEU President Colleen M. Kelley said that after Federal Judge John Garrett Penn received NTEU’s motion seeking an order for the government to implement a 1998 court of appeals ruling, the judge met in his chambers with attorneys for both NTEU and the Justice Department. She called his meeting with the parties “a step in the right direction in bringing the case to an end.”

The legal issue of liability in the class action lawsuit, which began in 1983, was decided finally in 1998, in a court of appeals decision which established the government’s liability to a class of some 170,000 current

and former special salary rate federal employees.

The liability arose because of an Office of Personnel Management (OPM) rule that governed how their pay increases were calculated. Under the illegal rule, special salary rate employees either were denied raises, or received only modest increases, from fiscal years 1982 through 1988.

The 1998 court of appeals decision sent the case back to the district court for implementation of its liability ruling. Since that time, NTEU has been working to prod the government to pay class members without further delay or court proceedings. Kelley noted the logistical difficulties involved in this settlement, but said NTEU’s commitment to concluding the matter has not to date been matched by the government’s.

“We hope our court action will bring this matter to a prompt conclusion,” Kelley said. “Clearly, those affected have waited long enough.”