Pay Bands Also Increased

Praising her staff for weathering "an extremely challenging year," Federal Aviation Administration Chief Marion Blakey announced this week most FAA employees will receive a 3.1 percent salary increase -- as well as an average 1 percent locality raise.

The raises -- or, in FAA-speak, "organizational success increases" (gotta love it) -- came after the agency met a series of air traffic and business goals, and affect approximately 27,000 employees, according to the Washington Post.

"While the survey showed the current base salaries of FAA employees are more than competitive, the pay bands lag behind the market in some pay categories," Blakey wrote in a letter, distributed this week to FAA employees. "This was particularly true for some of our lower pay bands, and I am very concerned that we be fair to all our employees."

Employees not covered by the agency's Core Compensation Plan, or involved in ATC duties, will receive 2.1 percent across-the-board pay increase, as well as supplemental increases that are dependent on location. FAA executives are covered under this plan, similar to the raise approved by Congress last year for all federal employees.

The average pay for FAA employees is more than $80,000 annually, according to the agency, with air traffic controllers pulling in $129,000 a year.

Hoping to stave off complaints from employees last year -- after many received all or a portion of their annual pay adjustment as a bonus, instead of a raise -- Blakey also announced she would raise the top of pay bands -- the range of salaries tied to jobs and work levels -- by 2.1 percent.

Such a move would allow employees currently frozen at or near the top levels of their current jobs, room for additional raises.

The FAA is only one of a handful of government agencies with a performance-based pay structure, according to the Post. The agency's experience with the policy has been studied by officials at the departments of Defense and Homeland Security. Those agencies plan to abandon the decades-old General Schedule plan and adopt a performance-based systems in the next year or two.

FMI: www.faa.gov