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Washington, D.C.— The overwhelming approval by the House today of a bill that could lead to improved pay and benefits for employees of the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) is evidence of “the strong support for the idea that this critical agency needs to address its recruiting and retention problems,” the leader of the union representing some 2,000 SEC employees said.

President Colleen M. Kelley of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU), which was elected the bargaining agent for SEC employees about a year ago after a hard-fought organizing campaign, called the House vote “a victory for employees, showing the importance of their vote to unionize.”

The idea of pay parity for SEC employees, contained in a broader bill restructuring the fees paid to the SEC from companies in the financial services industry, languished in Congress for a decade, Kelley said, despite support from both the agency and the companies it regulates.

“NTEU brought to bear our legislative and political resources to this issue,” Kelley said, “and I am extremely pleased that, once we did so, it moved forward in half-a-year’s time.” The House-passed version has been returned to the Senate, where that body’s approval is expected. The Senate earlier had passed its own version of the legislation.

The bill provides SEC employees with authority to bargain over pay and benefits, a step that provides the expectation of pay parity with other federal agencies with financial industry regulatory responsibilities—including the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), where NTEU represents employees and negotiates a compensation agreement.

Like FDIC and most other agencies covered by the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act of 1989 [FIRREA], SEC is completely funded by the financial services industry, with no taxpayer money appropriated.

Apart from the matter of fairness, both NTEU and SEC management have been highlighting the agency’s lack of competitiveness, not just with the private sector but other federal financial regulatory agencies as well, as a key reason this legislation is necessary.

Kelley has noted that over the past two years, 25 percent of the SEC’s attorneys, accountants and auditors have left the agency, mainly for higher salaries elsewhere. Its turnover rate is triple that of similar federal agencies.