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Washington, D.C. –The leader of the union representing some 2,000 employees of the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) said today she will press the agency to establish pay parity for its employees, as intended by Congress in recently approved legislation, despite the apparent failure of President Bush to include specific funding for pay parity in his proposed fiscal year 2003 budget.

President Colleen M. Kelley of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) said that while she is “deeply disappointed” to learn the administration intends to send Congress a budget for the SEC that does not specify funds for pay parity, “the SEC has discretion to negotiate with us to make pay parity a reality, whatever its budget, and we intend to press ahead to reach that goal.”

In a letter to President Bush, the NTEU president called his SEC budget proposal an “ill-advised action” which is “contrary to Congress’s intent in passing the pay parity bill” and which is “particularly unwise, given recent events showing the need for SEC oversight and protection.”

NTEU, which led the successful fight to include pay parity for SEC employees in legislation reducing the fees paid on securities trades, “will be using every resource available to our union” to win a fiscal 2003 SEC appropriation that includes at least $80 million to help achieve the long-sought goal of pay parity for SEC workers, Kelley said.

The pay parity legislation, which languished in Congress for a decade before NTEU successfully organized SEC employees in June 2000, calls for a reduction in fees paid to the SEC on securities trades to

only the amount needed to run the SEC, which is not funded by general revenues.

It is estimated, Kelley said, that the change in the fee structure generated by the legislation will result in $14 billion in reduced fees paid by corporations and securities traders over the next decade, while authorizing “only a fraction of that amount for pay parity.”

The NTEU leader reminded the president that both SEC labor and management came together to make “the proven case” that pay parity is essential to the proper functioning of the agency, and in particular, to help it attract and retain the high quality workers it needs. Turnover among professional employees at the SEC is nearly triple that of similar federal financial regulatory agencies.

“We are also proud the industry which SEC regulates and which pays the fees which fund it stand with us in seeking pay parity at the SEC,” she said.

NTEU is the largest independent federal union, representing some 150,000 employees in 25 agencies and departments.