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REPORT TO CONGRESS

SALINAS-MONTEREY, CALIFORNIA, FEDERAL WAGE SYSTEM WAGE AREA

VI. Local Wage Survey Results

Because the FWS is a prevailing rate system, its wage schedules are very market sensitive. It is the policy of the Federal Government to pay its blue-collar workers a fair wage that is comparable to what an employee could expect on average to earn for work at a similar level of skill in local private sector companies. The local wage surveys in the Salinas-Monterey and San Francisco wage areas show that the prevailing private sector rates of pay are different in the wage areas and that the private sector labor markets are different.

The chart below shows the current unrestricted hourly pay rates (prevailing market rates) for FWS wage grade (WG) employees at step 2 of the wage schedules in the Salinas-Monterey and San Francisco wage areas. These rates are derived from private sector pay rates for sample wage survey jobs.

The chart on the next page shows the average private sector hourly pay rates for FWS survey jobs common to both the Salinas-Monterey and San Francisco wage surveys. It demonstrates that the average private sector pay rates for survey jobs in the Salinas-Monterey survey area are generally lower than in the San Francisco survey area.

Based on DOD's survey findings, we believe the Salinas-Monterey survey area has a distinct and established private sector labor market that produces adequate wage rates to determine the prevailing private sector cost of labor in the wage area.

Employee representatives from the Naval Postgraduate School presented information from State and local government activities that shows that, in some cases, non-Federal Government employees earn more than FWS employees in the Salinas-Monterey wage area. By law, FWS wage surveys may include private sector establishments only. FWS wage surveys may not include data from any non-Federal Government employers in a wage area. Employee representatives also cited 2000 data published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) for its Occupational Employment Statistics program to show that certain selected occupations in the Salinas-Monterey wage area receive higher pay rates than in the San Francisco wage area.

There is no direct comparison between the methodologies used in FWS wage surveys and in BLS' survey programs. However, the overall trends from BLS' Occupational Employment Statistics program show certain parallels with the findings from FWS wage surveys in the Salinas-Monterey and San Francisco wage areas. For example, the estimated mean hourly wage for "Installation, Maintenance, and Repair Occupations" in 2000 was $19.18 in the San Francisco metropolitan area and $17.18 in the Salinas metropolitan area. In the category "Transportation and Material Moving Occupations" in 2000, the mean hourly wage was $15.02 in the San Francisco metropolitan area and $11.72 in the Salinas metropolitan area. In the category "Building and Grounds Cleaning and Maintenance Occupations" in 2000, the mean hourly wage was $11.54 in the San Francisco metropolitan area and $10.10 in the Salinas metropolitan area.