President signs end to NSPS
October 28th, 2009 | Agencies Congress Defense Pay & Benefits | Posted by Rebecca Neal
President Barack Obama signed the Defense authorization bill into law Wednesday afternoon, marking the eventual end to the controversial National Security Personnel System.
HR 2647 phases out the NSPS pay-for-performance system by Jan 1, 2012, and the Pentagon has six months from Wednesday to start transferring employees over to their original pay system. For many employees, that means a return to the General Schedule.
The bill also contains a number of provisions long anticipated by federal employees:
- Federal Employment Retirement System (FERS) employees will be able to count unused sick leave toward their years of service, just as Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS) employees can. This may end the epidemic of “FERS flu,” where soon-to-retire employees burn off sick leave because they couldn’t receive credit for it.
- FERS employees returning to work for the federal government would be able to redeposit their annuities.
- CSRS employees who work part time at the end of their careers would be able to have their annuities recalculated to be based only on their full-time salaries.
- Retirees returning to work for the federal government would be able to collect their full salaries while drawing their annuities. Agencies used to be able to pay rehired annuitants a full salary only if they obtained a waiver from the Office of Personnel Management.
- Federal employees in Alaska, Hawaii and U.S. territories will now receive locality pay instead of cost of living. Employees in the continental U.S. receive locality pay.
Feel free to celebrate in the comments section below, feds!
Pass civil service reforms, Congress members urge
September 10th, 2009 | Congress Pay & Benefits | Posted by Rebecca Neal
Members of the House’s Washington, D.C.-area delegation are urging lawmakers to keep a series of civil service reforms in the final version of the fiscal 2010 Defense Authorization bill.
The bill provides the long-desired FERS sick leave credit, which would allow sick leave to count as time served when calculating pensions.
The provisions in the bill are the same as those contained in a bill introduced by Rep. James Moran, D-Va.
“We’ve been working for a number of years to enact these common-sense federal employee reforms,” Moran said in a statement. “The House-passed Defense Authorization bill provides our best opportunity yet to bring needed incentives that will increase worker productivity and help recruit and retain the best and the brightest back to the federal civil service. I look forward to working with my colleagues to see that these provisions survive the House-Senate conference committee process.”
Members of the Washington delegation sent a letter to the chairmen and ranking members of the House Oversight and Government Reform and House Armed Services committees, saying the benefits are important to federal employees.
All of these provisions address key issues of fundamental fairness and efficiency for federal employees within the Department of Defense.”
Co-signers to the letter are: Reps. Frank Wolf, R-Va; Chris Van Hollen, D-Md.; Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C.; Elijah Cummings, D-Md; C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger, D-Md.; John Sarbanes, D-Md.; Donna Edwards, D-Md.; and Gerald Connolly, D-Va.
Other benefits included in the Defense Authorization bill are:
- Locality pay for federal employees in Alaska, Hawaii and U.S. territories.
- CSRS employees would be allowed to work part-time at the end of their careers and collect full annuities.
- FERS employees who leave government and return would receive credit for their previous federal service and be allowed to redeposit their retirement annuities.
House passes sick leave credit for FERS employees
June 24th, 2009 | Pay & Benefits | Posted by Elise Castelli
The House approved a measure tonight that would allow federal employees under the Federal Employees Retirement System to count their unused sick leave toward their retirement pension calculations. The measure could bring the newer FERS system in line with the Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS), which always allowed that calculation.
The Disabled Military Retiree Relief Act of 2009, H.R. 2990, passed in a 404-0 vote. It now moves to the Senate, which stripped similar provisions from a bill giving the Food and Drug Administration the authority to regulate tobacco.
In addition, to allowing FERS employees count sick their unused leave toward retirement, the bill also allows FERS employees who return to federal service to get credit for their previous service and to redeposit their retirement annuities.
CSRS employees also benefit from the bill. The legislation lets CSRS employees who choose to work part-time at the end of their careers collect their full annuities.
The bill also extends locality pay to Alaska, Hawaii and U.S. territories. The transition to locality pay will start in 2010 and end in 2012.
Tags: CSRS, FERS, locality pay, sick leave
House to vote on TSP, sick leave bill
April 1st, 2009 | Pay & Benefits | Posted by Steve Losey
Update: HR 1804 passed by a unanimous voice vote today. It will now head to the Senate, which is expected to consider the bill as part of the larger tobacco bill.
Original post: The House is preparing to vote on a bill containing several provisions affecting federal employees this afternoon. HR 1804, the Federal Retirement Reform Act, would:
- Automatically enroll all new employees in the Thrift Savings Plan’s G Fund. The Pentagon would decide on its own whether new military service members would be automatically enrolled.
- Create a Roth 401(k) option in the TSP.
- Allow the board governing the TSP to create additional investment funds for participants.
- Allow employees under the Federal Employees Retirement System to count their unused sick leave towards calculating their retirement annuities.
- Make sure Civil Service Retirement System employees who work part time at the end of their careers are paid their full annuities. Due to a faulty 1986 law, CSRS employees who go part time before retirement find their pre-1986 service is incorrectly calculated as part-time service, costing them hundreds or thousands of dollars each year. This bill would fix that error.
Floor debate is expected to begin at 1 p.m.
Tags: CSRS, FERS, Roth option, sick leave, Thrift Savings Plan
Sick leave bill introduced
February 10th, 2009 | Pay & Benefits | Posted by Steve Losey
Reps. James Moran, D-Va., and Frank Wolf, R-Va., just reintroduced a bill that would allow employees under the Federal Employees Retirement System to count unused sick leave as time toward their annuities.
The sponsors of the FERS Sick Leave Equity Act, which has not yet been assigned a number, say it will save the government $68 million per year by cutting down on employees’ lost productivity. Because FERS employees currently lose all of their sick leave credit when they leave the government, Moran said many start to suffer from the so-called “FERS flu” as they near retirement:
FERS’ use it or lose it system for sick leave hampers productivity and increases training costs. We need to be incentivizing the accrual of sick leave, not encouraging employees to call in sick in the weeks leading up to retirement.
Congress added an identical benefit for employees under the old Civil Service Retirement System in 1969.
Moran’s office is still trying to line up senators to sponsor their own version of this bill, spokesman Austin Durrer said. A lack of Senate support doomed Moran’s bill last year — it passed the House in July as part of a tobacco bill, but the Senate version contained no such provision.
Tags: FERS, Frank Wolf, James Moran, sick leave
Sick leave bill on its way
February 4th, 2009 | Pay & Benefits | Posted by Steve Losey
Rep. James Moran, D-Va., is preparing to reintroduce a bill that would allow employees under the Federal Employees Retirement System to count unused sick leave as time toward their annuities. Moran spokesman Austin Durrer said the bill could be reintroduced as early as next week.
A previous sick leave bill sponsored by Moran was attached to a tobacco bill approved by the House last year, but the Senate’s version did not have a similar provision and the sick leave proposal did not survive.
Tags: FERS, James Moran, sick leave
Retirement annuity act reintroduced
February 4th, 2009 | Congress Pay & Benefits | Posted by Rebecca Neal
The FERS Redeposit Act is getting a second life.
Three representatives reintroduced the bill, HR, 828, Tuesday, which would allow federal employees returning to the federal workforce from the private sector to reinvest their full federal retirement annuity without losing any credit for previous years of service.
The bill, first introduced in 2007, died in the House Subcommittee on the Federal Workforce, Postal Service and the District of Columbia.
The bill was introduced by Reps. James Moran, D-Va., Frank Wolf, R-Va., and Gerald Connolly, D-Va. It’s been referred to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and will likely be referred to the federal workforce subcommittee again.