The Civil Life

For many working parents, scraping together leave and money for maternal and paternal leave is one of the more difficult tasks of bringing a child home.  As many federal employees find out the hard way, the voluntary leave transfer program (VLTP) is the only practical way to get enough paid leave to cover the the 3 or so months that it takes to get the child and parents ready for daycare, and it’s rare that people get more than a few days of donated leave.  We’ve certainly witnessed coworkers forced to put their infants into daycare at 6 weeks to keep the paychecks coming, and this can be hard on both the babies and parents, especially given the number of viruses floating around the average daycare facility.  It’s questionable whether these stressed out, sleep deprived, and sick workers benefit the government.

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The New Jersey newspaper Ashbury Park Press has updated their federal employees search so that it now lists most 2007 federal employee salaries.  It might be surprising that many federal employee names and salaries are public knowledge, but it’s been the long standing policy of our government that this information be made available to taxpayers.   It’s certainly fascinating to see how much coworkers make when mapping out a career path.

A surprising number of feds don’t know about FSAFEDS, the flexible spending accounts administered by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). These accounts let you pay for health and child care with before tax dollars, resulting in savings of 20-40% over after tax dollars, yielding savings of up to $4000 per year depending your tax rate. There are two kinds of accounts most people use:

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FEDERALDaily reports that on May 7th, the Military Personnel Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee recommended a 3.9% raise (cost of living adjustment) for members of the armed services. In most years, civilian federal worker salary increases follow the same formula, although not without a fight.

Curiously, the most recent measurement of year to year inflation by the Labor Department is also 3.9%.

In most workplaces, salaries are a carefully or poorly guarded secret, depending on how Darwinian the management is. In the case of many federal workers, salaries are public knowledge.

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