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Washington, D.C.—The ranking minority member of the House Civil Service Subcommittee today pledged to more than 350 members of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) that he would work for federal civilian-military pay parity in 2004.

“Anything less,” Rep. Danny Davis (D-IL) told delegates to NTEU’s annual Legislative Conference “would send the regrettable message (to federal civilian employees) that their service is not valued as much as that of others.”

Rep. Davis made the commitment in remarks to the NTEU members at a panel discussion on the second day of the union’s legislative conference. NTEU President Colleen M. Kelley led the discussion which included Ron Martinson, staff director of the House Civil Service Subcommittee and subcommittee staff member Tanya Shand.

The administration’s 2004 budget proposal calls for a 2 percent civilian pay increase while proposing an average 4.1 percent raise for members of the military. President Kelley has called the civilian pay proposal “totally inadequate,” and said that “it fails to take into account the day-to-day efforts of front-line federal employees, not just in protecting the homeland but in meeting the broad range of vital public needs.”

Rep. Davis, now in his fourth term, noted that civilian and military pay raises have been identical in 15 of the past 17 years. “ Notwithstanding today’s uncertain climate, he said, the important tradition of pay parity should be continued.

Martinson said the subcommittee, chaired by Rep. Jo Ann Davis (R-VA), “has a full plate” of issues it wishes to address, and plans on taking “a hard and fair look” at issues affecting the federal workplace including administration efforts to institute a pay for performance compensation system and its initiative to contract as many as 850,000 federal jobs to the private sector.

The panel discussion largely focused on the agenda of the House Civil Service Subcommittee for the first session of the 108th Congress and featured questions from NTEU members.

In response to a question, Martinson said he does not believe that contracting government work to the private sector “should be an automatic presumption” to address efforts to improve government efficiency and effectiveness. President Kelley said the first step should be “to get our arms around” the extent of current federal contracting before making any further decisions on this vital question.

On the matter of personnel flexibilities, which are another administration objective, President Kelley noted that many agencies “are not using the flexibilities already on the books.” Congress needs “to question closely” those agencies that say they don’t have the personnel tools they need, she said, before making wholesale changes in the federal personnel system.

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