August 11, 2022
Last month, the House of Representatives passed its fiscal year 2023 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) with several NFFE priorities for federal employees. The legislation includes many wins regarding pay, benefits, and workplace policies affecting workers at the Department of Defense and defense-adjacent agencies.
The House version of the 2023 NDAA:
- Defunds the Department of Veterans Affairs Asset and Infrastructure Review (AIR) Commission, which published a biased and flawed study that recommended the closure or downsizing of nearly one-third of VA medical centers.
- Includes a provision to eliminate Schedule F-like excepted service hiring authorities, a Trump-era scheme to place political appointees throughout government without proper oversight or limitations.
- Provides a 4.6% pay raise for federal employees.
- Provides an additional temporary supplementary 2.4% “inflation bonus” for DoD employees making less than $45,000 a year.
- Reemphasizes support for H.R. 2499, a bill to expand worker’s compensation presumption of illness and injury for federal firefighters, over the pending Senate version.
- Requires locality pay surveys to study VA nurse pay in conjunction with private sector pay for the same specialties.
- Requests a GAO study of the Federal Wage System (FWS) and the prevailing wage rate for wage grade workers who support Navy shipyards.
- Prohibits arbitrary personnel caps of the DoD civilian workforce.
- Allows additional carryover money to stabilize military depot hiring and retention.
- Promotes the achievements and accomplishments of the DoD civilian workforce in terms of its impact to facilitate and reduce stress on military readiness, and increases the level of scrutiny and accountability over contract services to prevent biased privatization.
- Continues the moratorium on the Circular A-76, which is a biased circular that gives the private sector unfair leverage in public-private competitions.
“The legislation passed by the House includes many wins for NFFE members and federal employees as a whole,” said NFFE National President Randy Erwin. “It is great to see bipartisan support for our country’s dedicated civil servants, who will receive pay increases and additional workplace protections from the provisions in the NDAA. NFFE looks forward to working with the Senate to preserve the current favorable NDAA language and in finding ways we can expand the legislation to benefit workers across the federal government.”