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Washington, D.C.— Employees of the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) will move one step closer to pay parity with their federal regulatory counterparts with a scheduled House vote on legislation that would remodel the fee structure paid by the financial services industry, a step applauded by the leader of the union representing SEC workers. The vote is expected on Wednesday.

President Colleen M. Kelley of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) emphasized that NTEU has taken a leadership role in working with members from both political parties on the legislation which already has passed the Senate. NTEU represents some 2,000 SEC employees.

Passage of H.R. 1088, Kelley said, “will go a long way toward addressing a critical personnel issue at the SEC—the continuing loss of experienced and talented employees who see not just much higher salaries in the private sectors, but higher salaries being paid to those in the federal sector doing similar work.”

Over the past two years, she noted, 25 percent of SEC attorneys, accountants and auditors have left the agency staff, including a turnover rate of 14 percent in 1999 alone. At comparable agencies, like the NTEU-represented Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and the Federal Reserve Board, the turnover rate is about five percent, she said.

Kelley disagreed with concerns raised by Rep. Dan Burton (R-IN), chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, that the bill carries adverse policy and budgetary implications. “For one thing,” Kelley said, “there is no budget impact. The SEC is completely funded by fees paid from the financial services industry regulated by the agency. No taxpayer money is involved.”

She noted that other federal financial regulatory agencies operate under the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act of 1989 (FIRREA), and that unlike employees at most of those agencies, SEC workers do not follow a modified private sector model.

“H.R. 1088 would remedy that,” Kelley said, “and provide the agency with much-needed relief for its recruitment and retention problems, while offering employees the opportunity for fairness in their pay structure. It would do this by putting it under the same pay system as every other FIRREA agency.”

NTEU is the largest independent federal sector union, representing some 150,000 employees in 25 agencies and departments. The 2,000 SEC employees represented by NTEU work in both the Washington headquarters and in field offices around the nation.