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Washington, D.C.—The National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) and the Justice Department are continuing their efforts to reach agreement on all issues in the long-running back pay case affecting special rate federal employees, and have rescheduled for October 30 a court status conference to report on their progress.

NTEU President Colleen M. Kelley said the parties “remain actively engaged” in the mediation program of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. A court status conference had been scheduled for tomorrow, September 21, but the parties told Judge John Garrett Penn that further efforts through the court mediation program are needed. The court’s rules require that mediation proceedings remain confidential.

Kelley said that “while a completed written agreement has not yet been reached, NTEU believes it would be appropriate to continue the mediation process.”

The case affects some 200,000 current and former special rate federal employees whose pay increases were either delayed or denied during the fiscal years 1982 through 1988 by an Office of Personnel Management (OPM) regulation later ruled to be illegal.

The most recent court decision in the case occurred in January 1998, when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled in favor of NTEU on the issue of the appropriate formula to be used in determining

who among the plaintiffs would be eligible to receive back pay. The formula ordered by the lower court would have sharply restricted the number of eligible recipients.

Kelley noted that while the exact amount of back pay is not yet possible to calculate, it is believed that the total recovery will be in the millions of dollars and that “a significant portion” of the large class of plaintiffs will share in the total recovery.