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Washington, D.C.—The payment of more than $1.4 million in bonuses to political appointees is the wrong step for the administration to take while it continues to oppose pay parity between federal civilian employees and members of the military, the head of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) said today.

That is particularly true, NTEU President Colleen M. Kelley said, in light of the bipartisan support that is building for continued civilian-military pay parity in 2004. The administration has proposed a 2.0 percent pay raise next year for federal civilian workers, in contrast to a proposed 4.1 percent increase for those in the military. She urged the administration “to rethink its opposition” to civilian-military pay parity.

President Kelley made her comments in the wake of a report by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) to Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD) that the administration in 2002 paid $1.44 million in bonuses to 470 political appointees.

The bonuses, which the OPM report said averaged $3,064 to political appointees earning an average salary of $99,583, “do not occur in a vacuum,” the NTEU leader said, noting their adverse impact on federal employee morale at a time when the gap between their pay and that of their private sector counterparts continues to widen.

“There is a retention and recruitment crisis enveloping the federal government,” President Kelley said. “It is driven in large part by the public-private pay gap, and that inevitably will hurt services to taxpayers.”

OPM provided the report on the bonuses to Rep. Hoyer some months after he requested it and after published reports last winter disclosed that the administration had reinstated the bonus program for political appointees under which they can be paid more than $10,000.

“Low morale in the federal workforce serves no one well,” President Kelley said, “including employees, their agencies and the taxpayers.” More competitive federal pay, along with continued civilian-military pay parity, “would go a long way” toward helping the government compete with the private sector for the most qualified employees, she said.

NTEU is the largest independent federal union, representing some 150,000 employees in 29 agencies and departments.