Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, March 22, 1990                   TAG: 9003222085
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                 LENGTH: Medium

MERIT PAY PROPOSED BY BUSH

"We want to link salary to performance," said Constance Newman, director of the Office of Personnel Management, rather than to the number of years on the job.

Newman told the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee that automatic "step," or seniority, increases would be eliminated for professional and most administrative employees in the pay reform bill she is preparing to send to Congress as early as next week.

Clerical and technical workers would get automatic step increases only until they reach the average salary level in their communities. This would normally take about five years. After that, all raises for these workers also would be based on merit.

For the first time, the administration will propose that annual increases go only to workers who meet minimum standards, OPM officials said.

These annual increases - which are granted on top of periodic step increases for employees during their first 18 years of service - are technically called "adjustments" approved by Congress in an effort to keep federal workers "comparable" with similar jobs in the private sector. Under Newman's bill, these would be withheld from workers who fail to be judged "fully successful" by their supervisors.

The administration's pay plan, which has been held up by continuing disputes between OPM and the Office of Management and Budget over costs, will scrap the General Schedule of pay and divide federal workers into two groups - professional and administrative workers, and technical and clerical employees, Newman said.

Professional and administrative workers' salaries would be determined on a national schedule because these civil servants are recruited nationally, according to OPM. Technical and clerical pay would be determined on a locality basis and would differ from area to area because these workers are normally recruited locally.

The Bush administration's merit pay proposal is expected to trigger a major battle with federal unions.

"We are adamantly opposed to moving to this system," said Janice LaChance, a spokeswoman for the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal union. "There is no uniformity, and it's all dependent on the supervisor.

"With all the things that need to be reformed, it's a shame that they have to propose this because it will only create more problems," she said.

Other federal union officials suggested that the merit pay plan was only a cost-cutting effort disguised as a reform.