The Fiscal Year 2003 Omnibus Appropriations bill (H.J.Res. 2) adopted by the Senate includes an amendment offered by U.S. Senator Daniel K. Akaka (D-Hawaii) that expresses the sense of Congress that federal civilian employees, including those federal skilled craft and trade workers paid under the Federal Wage System (FWS), should receive parity in the annual adjustments of their compensation. The Senate adopted the amendment by unanimous consent.

With a few exceptions, since 1981, military and General Schedule (GS) federal personnel have received equal pay increases. Yet, the Administration's FY03 budget proposed different adjustments for the military and GS employees. The Akaka amendment calls for parity between the military and all federal employees, both General Schedule and Wage Grade.

Wage Grade employees are the government's blue-collar workers. These trade, craft, and labor employees are essential to the government's daily operation. The majority of FWS employees work in the Department of Defense (DoD) and Department of Veterans' Affairs (VA). Fifty-eight percent of all blue-collar employees at the VA and 45 percent at DoD are veterans who have veterans' preference status, compared to only 25 percent of all federal employees. In fact, veterans' preference status federal employees are concentrated in the skilled craft and trade FWS jobs.

"My amendment recognizes that Wage Grade employees, like their General Schedule counterparts, are key to the security and defense of our nation. They perform a range of duties critical to the success of military missions, the safety of our soldiers, and the well-being of our veterans. Hawaii has nearly 6,000 FWS employees. It is a matter of simple equity that we acknowledge their hard work and provide them with an adjustment in compensation equivalent to that of our military and GS workforce," Senator Akaka said.

For the past 22 years, the Treasury-General Government Appropriations bill has limited increases to basic pay for FWS employees. This limit is equal to the sum of the nationwide General Schedule increase plus the average amount of new locality pay for GS employees. However, this limit is not part of the FWS law and has nothing to do with how the private sector pays blue collar workers.

Akaka noted, "Since FWS workers can be paid no more than the maximum GS annual adjustment in spite of the existence of a prevailing rate law, they also deserve to receive the annual adjustment . My amendment recognizes an existing inequity that deserves to be fixed and shows our commitment to helping the wage grade workforce."

Over the last 11 years, FWS workers at the lowest grades suffered a 1.7 percent decline in the inflation-adjusted real value of their pay. Employees in the middle of the FWS classification system have seen only a 2.5 percent increase while those at the top of the FWS scale have seen a 5.7 percent increase.