After months of prodding by the National Federation of Federal Employees (NFFE) and its partners in the federal labor community, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) announced that federal workers will finally see their 2019 pay raise in paychecks arriving Friday, April 19, 2019, for most federal workers. The 1.4 percent across-the-board increase and .5 percent locality pay increase was approved by Congress and signed by the President in February. A little more than two months later, the increase is finally appearing in paychecks.
“We have not been given a satisfactory explanation for what took so long to process federal employees’ pay adjustments this year,” said NFFE National President Randy Erwin. “This is a fairly routine matter that happens every year. It is unacceptable that it took this long to get accomplished this year.”
NFFE sent a letter to Acting OPM Director Margaret Weichert in March requesting information on the status of the pay increases, and NFFE staff worked with a bipartisan congressional inquiry into the delay.
The National Finance Center, the payroll processing agency that provides services to over 170 agencies and more than 650,000 federal employees, announced that “most employees will see their salary increase in pay period (PP) 07, with retroactive funds included back to PP01.” PP07 ended on April 14, 2019. OPM told NFFE in a private call that they expect federal workers who do not receive a pay adjustment for PP07, will likely receive it by mid-May.
“The way OPM has handled the 2019 pay adjustment for federal employees has been a disaster,” said President Erwin. “NFFE is going to continue to push OPM to expedite the processing of pay adjustments for ALL federal employees this year. We are going to continue to work with Congressional leaders to identify the real reasons for the intolerable delay. Finally, we are going to take all possible steps to make sure similar delays do not occur in future years. Federal workers deserve to get their pay adjustments on time; that needs to happen.”