Are federal employees overpaid relative to the private sector? Is the General Schedule the best system to use for compensating the federal workforce? In this follow up to his previous article on federal pay, the author digs deeper on the debate to clarify some of his previous points and also addresses some new topics related to federal sector pay.
President Obama will sign a presidential memorandum this week to give federal employees at least 6 weeks of paid sick leave when having a child.
The author says that while you can retire on any date that you choose, there may be some advantages to retiring at certain times of the month or year. She shares her opinions as to which dates she believes may be best dates for federal employees to consider retiring.
The author says that federal employees who move to more expensive locality areas prior to retirement can actually boost their annuity after retirement. He explains how this works through the use of some hypothetical examples.
The Hatch Act allows most federal employees to participate in some partisan political activity. The new rule issued by OPM reflects the less stringent penalties and loosening of Hatch Act restrictions on many feds.
Since the enhancement of some benefits for federal employees earlier this week, a number of readers have been asking questions on the implementation of these new benefits. While many questions will not be answered for some time, here is information from the Office of Personnel Management on the new benefits that will be helpful to some of our readers.
OPM just posted on its web site questions and answers for federal agencies regarding administration of the new recruitment, relocation and retention incentive authorities in response to questions received from agencies.
Executive Order issued on 2004 pay increase
