Your Turn

FERS & the federal pay raise: What’s the latest?

Is there a federal pay raise in your future? And what's the status of legislation to reform the Federal Employees Retirement System? Find out when Federal News...

July 25, 2018 12:10 pm

1 min read

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Earlier this year President Donald Trump proposed a zero pay raise for January 2019. In its place would be a yet-to-come system that would give agencies more flexibility and cash to reward outstanding workers with outstanding raise.

Now there is positive talk that some kind of raise, either 1.9 percent by some counts or 3 percent as proposed by congressional friends of feds, could be worked out via the appropriation process after the midterm elections.

In addition government workers and retirees have been riveted to fast-changing proposals that would make the FERS retirement program much more expensive for current and future workers, and less valuable to retirees.

The proposals are still out there, but people are making little noise about them. Have they started to fade as up-front issues? Or will they come back in the lame duck Congress?

We’re hoping to get some of the answers, or at least educated speculation, today when Federal News Radio reporter Nicole Ogrysko joins host Mike Causey on this week’s Your Turn radio show. She’s been tracking pay, retirement and reorganization actions in agencies and Congress. We see if we can find out what’s up, where she thinks things are going and what’s the timetable. Listen to the program today at 10 a.m. EDT at www.federalnewsradio.com or on 1500 AM in the D.C. area. All shows are archived on our website.