President Trump Plans to Give Federal Employees a Raise
The Trump administration announced plans to recommend a 1.9 percent pay raise for federal workers to take effect January 2018, according to a budget document and senior budget official.
The official, who was not authorized to comment publicly, said agencies have been told by the White House to build a 1.9 percent pay raise for civilian employees into their spending plans for the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1, reports The Washington Post.
In the administration’s proposed budget released last week, military spending was increased by $54 billion and non-military programs were cut by roughly the same amount, but there was no mention of a raise. The administration is set to release a more detailed plan in May.
A preliminary budget for the Commerce Department directs the agency to “factor in a 1.9 percent pay raise for civilian employees, to go into effect on the first pay period of January, 2018.” Raises such as these are typically government-wide and as such, would apply to all federal employees.
Federal employee unions were not satisfied with the raise, given recent cuts to federal employees’ pay and benefits packages.
“While it’s good that the White House recognizes the need to raise wages for federal employees, [a 1.9 percent pay raise] is far below what’s called for under the law,” J. David Cox Sr., national president of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the largest union, said in a statement.
“Federal employees earn less today than they did at the start of the decade when adjusted for inflation, and they deserve a more meaningful increase to make up for the more than $182 billion in cuts to their pay and benefits that have occurred since 2010,” Cox said.
A 1.9 percent raise would be standard given the increases in recent years. After three years of frozen pay from 2011 to 2013, federal workers from 2014 to 2017 received raises of 1, 1, 1.3 and 2.1 percent each year with the last two figures representing average rates due to varying locality pay rates.
