Attached is a copy of the Executive Order issued by the White House implementing the 2.1 percent average pay increase for General Schedule federal employees that is effective with the first pay period of 2017. 

The President’s Fiscal Year (FY) 2017 budget proposal to Congress recommended a 1.6 percent average pay increase for 2017, with one percent designated for the across-the-board pay raise and the remaining amount allocated to increasing locality pay rates. Earlier, the President, under authority provided by the federal pay law, issued alternative pay plans to Congress calling for the 1.6 percent average pay raise. Congress did not include any language designating or blocking a pay raise in its earlier appropriations measures or in the enacted Continuing Resolution that runs through April 28, 2017. 

However, after Congress provided military personnel a 2.1% pay increase for 2017 in its final deliberations on the annual defense authorization bill at the end of November, NTEU called for pay parity for all government workers and worked with federal-employee friendly lawmakers to secure a higher pay increase for federal civilians, resulting in a subsequent alternative pay plan from the Administration that increased locality pay rates. The President's Executive Order formally implemented this higher average 2.1% pay raise.    

Due to a shift in locality pay from SEC locality tables to the GS locality tables in 2014, two SEC offices (BRO and NYRO) had higher locality rates than the GS schedule. These offices are required to wait until the GS locality rate "catches up" with the old higher SEC locality rate before they will receive locality increases. This year, GS caught up with the NYRO locality rate, and for that reason the NYRO will get a portion of the new locality rate for 2017 (and all GS locality increases that occur in the future). The GS locality rate for Boston still has not caught up with the BRO's SEC locality rate, so Boston employees will not receive a locality increase in 2017.

While NTEU was pleased with these recent actions to increase federal employee pay, the union recognizes the toll the last few years of pay freezes and meager pay raises have had on the federal workforce. NTEU is committed to working hard to increase pay, protect retirement, safeguard collective bargaining rights--and to ensure respect for federal employees and their work—in 2017.