WASHINGTON -- Tucked away in the Congressional budget deal hammered out to end the government shutdown is a 1% pay raise for all federal workers in January, which could give National Credit Union Administration employees their second pay hike in a matter of months.
This past summer, the agency skirted a three-year government-wide freeze on salaries when it decided to give its employees a one-time, lump-sum payment equivalent to 3% (a total of $3.6 million) to all workers as part of its program to initiate pay parity with other federal financial regulators.
NCUA justified this payment amid the government-wide freeze on salaries by saying the Federal CU Act requires the agency to maintain comparable pay for its employees compared to federal bank regulatory agencies (Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., Federal Reserve, Office of Comptroller of the Currency) in order to retain NCUA's ability to hire and keep top talent.
The agency emphasized at the time that the one-time payments had nothing to do with annual merit raises, which -- like other agencies -- had been frozen for the previous two years, but it created controversy in the industry because it was seen as an effort to bypass the government freeze on pay.
NCUA said yesterday a decision on a January pay raise for its employees has not been made yet and will be part of the agency’s budget deliberations and announced in November when an annual budget is voted.
A decision on pay will be made in negotiation with the National Treasury Employees Union, which also represents FDIC workers and other government agencies. Under the current union contract, NCUA salaries increase by the same percentage the Government Services pay scales increase.
The union represents about 960 NCUA employees, most of them examiners, but NCUA typically awards its 200 non-union executives the same pay raises as union employees.
