That’s the case at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, 42,000 acres sprawled across 20 miles in central New Jersey, south of Trenton. All white-collar, salaried civilians at the base, covered by the government’s General Schedule (GS) system, are in the New York City locality for pay purposes. But the blue-collar workers, paid hourly and covered by the Federal Wage System (FWS), are split between the New York City pay area and the Philadelphia locality, a lower wage area.
So, the joint base has two sets of disparities. Not only are white- and some blue-collar raises based on different pay areas, but blue-collar (also called wage grade) staffers working at the same base are split between two pay localities, with one providing higher pay raises than the other.
“All of these employees work under one commander on the same joint base,” said American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) President J. David Cox Sr., “so it is clearly unfair for some to be paid less than others based solely on outdated geographical distinctions.”
The disparity developed when the joint base, known as JB MDL, was created by the 2009 merger of McGuire Air Force Base, the Army’s Fort Dix and Naval Air Engineering Station Lakehurst. White-collar employees at McGuire and Dix were moved, for pay purposes, into the New York City locality, which already included the Lakehurst Naval station. But the blue-collar workers at McGuire and Dix were not, meaning their raises are lower than their wage-grade colleagues on the Lakehurst section of the base.
They have been trying to get that corrected ever since. Now they are close.
AFGE proclaimed “Wage Equality Nears For Federal Employees at New Jersey Military Base” after the Federal Prevailing Rate Advisory Council voted last month to recommend unifying blue-collar wages at the base. Unification would mean a pay raise for workers in the McGuire and Dix sectors.
That vote followed a 2010 recommendation by the council to consolidate wage-grade localities so they are not split between pay areas, as is the case in New Jersey. But that recommendation was not implemented because a pay-rate freeze was in effect. Now the JB MDL recommendation waits a decision on implementation by Beth Cobert, acting director of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM).
She is facing pressure from New Jersey’s congressional delegation to do so.
“FWS employees at JBMDL have waited too long for this disparity to be resolved,” a delegation letter to Cobert says. Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) released the letter on Tuesday. “While the FWS workforce waits for pay parity, they must perform their duties knowing that their coworkers are doing the same job on the Lakehurst portion of the base at higher wages. Additionally, JBMDL leadership has stated this disparity impacts mission readiness because they do not have the flexibility to assign FWS workers from one area of the base to another side of the base because of the wage disparity.”
A decision to implement the council’s decision can’t come soon enough for workers such as Rod Koeppen, a cook supervisor at the Federal Correctional Institution Fort Dix, a civilian prison. With the pay disparity, he said, “you feel really cheated.”
If Cobert agrees to implement the council’s recommendation, about 800 wage-grade employees at the base would be affected, “with most receiving increases in pay,” according to Brenda Roberts, the deputy associate OPM director for pay and leave.
Beyond that, a decision in favor of the joint base blue-collar workers also would generate momentum for the larger effort to have hourly and salaried employees who work in the same locations across the country paid the same locality rate. That would result in higher pay raises for thousands of feds.
“Paying two employees who work in the same location differently based solely on location simply doesn’t make sense,” Cox said, “and it’s unfair to the employees who see the difference in their wallets.”
Koeppen said the money in his wallet would grow by $1.50 an hour if his pay locality moved from Philadelphia to New York. That can have an effect not just on an individual’s pocketbook, but collectively on the workplace.
“When you show favoritism for the GS employees and take the blue-collar employees and keep them at a lower rate,” Koeppen said, “the morale among wage-grade employees is not good.”