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Washington, D.C.—Due to a court scheduling conflict, Federal Judge John Garrett Penn has reset for June 14 a status conference concerning the mediation effort involving the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) and the Justice Department dealing with the long-running special salary rates case.

NTEU President Colleen M. Kelley emphasized that the union “will continue to do everything in its power to resolve the remaining issues and ensure that the government satisfies its ever-growing obligations to the class members.”

Judge Penn, who sits on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, ordered the case into mediation in early April after a conference with attorneys for NTEU and the Justice Department on a union request for an order that the government satisfy its back pay obligation to some 170,000 current and former special salary rate employees. Originally, Judge Penn set a follow-up conference for no later than May 31.

The government has yet to comply with a January 1998 Court of Appeals ruling that finally established its liability to members of the special salary rates class whose pay raises were either denied or reduced between 1982 and 1988 due to an illegal Office of Personnel Management (OPM) rule.

Kelley noted that NTEU will ask the court to rule promptly on its request for an order directing payment by the government in the event mediation does not prove successful.