Pentagon issues performance pay and bonuses averaging 8.35 percent

[The Straight Story]

Pentagon issues performance pay and bonuses averaging 8.35 percent
By Brittany R. Ballenstedt [e-mail] February 18, 2009

Nearly all of the employees in the Defense Department's new personnel system were rewarded for their job performance in their first paychecks of 2009, with the average pay raise and bonus totaling 8.35 percent.

According to figures issued by the Pentagon on Wednesday, 98 percent of the more than 170,000 employees rated under the National Security Personnel System received performance-based payouts for 2009, meaning their supervisors graded their work as a 3 or better out of five possible points. The majority of those employees -- 55.4 percent -- earned a rating of 3, defining them as valued performers.

The average rating among all NSPS employees was 3.46, and the typical pay raise was 6.41 percent plus a one-time bonus of 1.94 percent. This increase was larger than the 2.9 percent across-the-board pay hike and 1 percent locality boost that federal employees under the General Schedule received for 2009. Workers in the Washington area received the highest overall increase of the General Schedule employees, at 4.78 percent.

But the 8.35 percent average payout under NSPS isn't directly comparable to the across-the-board and locality pay boosts that General Schedule employees receive. General Schedule employees have earnings potential beyond their annual raise, while under NSPS, within-grade pay boosts, quality step increases and bonuses are factored into the overall performance-based pay increase.

http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=42068&dcn=todaysnews

[Double T]

1. The Pentagon is the wall street of government.

Enough said:puke: :puke: :puke: :puke:

[DCKit]

2. Bribing them to keep their mouths shut about all the * era malfeasance?

I've never heard of anything like that in gubmint.

[ixion]

3. must be nice to spend other people's money so freely

:grr:

[haele]

4. What they don't tell you is that the majority of bonuses are around $1500

And were given to people who couldn't get pay raises due to performance because they were topped out at their level and there are few to no job openings above them. On average, these bonuses are less than 2% of their yearly salary instead of the 8.5% average they're claiming. Just like Bill Gates walking in a bar raises the average salery of everyone there.
Yeah, I can imagine the :nopity: party people who don't work government service will have for them, but these aren't the evil contractors, these are usually pretty hardworking people like Bunnatine Greenhouse who end up being the whistle-blowers and the ones who actually do the grunt work on keeping the government going with the least amount of waste, fraud, and abuse.

According to a "little bird" of my DoD govvie acquaintances, lower level Flag equivalents types - used to be GS-15s - who make on average 40 - 50% less than what they would have been getting on the outside working for a corporation at the same level were getting around $3 - 5K as a bonus this year if they saved the government money. And we're talking hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars worth of money saved just to get that.

Of course, I s'pose if you're in the inner circle or an embedded Shrub appointee, you might be getting more. But that's not what they're seeing in the trenches.

Compare this to people working in the private sector, that's not a lot, for people who work for a company that's supposed to break even.

And yea, comparing those who still have jobs getting a merit bonus in lieu of raises to those who get nothing because they lost their jobs, it's probably too much money at all to consider giving out, but that's a different comment on another discussion.

Haele