WASHINGTON – Federal employees will receive an average 5.2 percent pay increase next year, the highest raise for the federal workforce in 43 years (see the Office of Personnel Management 2024 pay tables). 

“This is a well-deserved increase for our country’s federal workforce,” said NTEU National President Doreen Greenwald. “The data shows that federal salaries fell further behind the private sector in the last year, so the average 5.2 percent pay hike is a welcome step forward.”  

The Federal Salary Council found that federal employees on average earned 27.54 percent less than private sector workers in similar jobs in this year, a pay gap that grew from 24.09 percent in 2022.  

“This will be the biggest raise that most federal employees have seen in their entire government career and we thank President Biden for supporting the professionals who deliver the public services that Americans depend upon every day,” Greenwald said.  

The raise includes an average 4.7 percent across-the-board raise and an average 0.5 percent increase in locality pay. The 4.7 percent across-the-board raise is called for under the Federal Employees Pay Comparability Act of 1990 and is based on the annual increase in the Employment Cost Index.     

DETROIT – Members of the National Treasury Employees Union today elected longtime federal employee and local union leader Doreen Greenwald as the next NTEU National President.   

Greenwald, 57, has been NTEU National Executive Vice President since 2021 and was unopposed in the election for the National President. She will replace outgoing National President Tony Reardon, who is retiring.  

“I know firsthand the challenges NTEU members face every day, the benefit of NTEU in the workplace and the fight it will take to ensure our union remains strong and our members are treated with the dignity and respect they have earned and deserve,” Greenwald said.  

Delegates to NTEU’s 59th National Convention in Detroit also elected Customs and Border Protection Officer Anand Muni as National Executive Vice President, the union’s second highest office.  

Muni, 44, has been a member of NTEU since 2009 and is now in his third term as president of Chapter 165 (CBP Oakland/San Francisco).  

WASHINGTON – A powerful coalition of business and industry groups that rely on efficient operations at U.S. ports of entry have joined NTEU in calling on Congress to approve funding for 1,000 new Customs and Border Protection Officers in the supplemental funding package. 

This supplemental funding would help the fight against fentanyl and other synthetic opioid trafficking at the ports by improving staffing levels at the 328 ports of entry. 

“Our air, sea, and land ports are in desperate need of more CBP employees at the ports-of-entry to reduce wait times for international travelers and cargo shippers, improve the interdiction of illegal drugs and illicit goods, and handle the processing of migrants seeking asylum,” according to the coalition’s letter sent Dec. 5 to leaders on the House and Senate appropriation committees. 

NTEU represents CBP personnel at the ports, including law enforcement officers, agriculture inspectors, trade enforcement personnel and other frontline workers. CBP employees at the ports are essential to both national security and international commerce. CBP collected $112 billion in duties, taxes and fees in fiscal year 2022, making them the second largest collectors of revenue in the federal government. 

Congress dodged a shutdown for the second time when the Senate overwhelmingly passed the House’s previously approved two-step continuing resolution late Wednesday. Then, President Biden signed the current stopgap bill on Friday, making it official. The CR buys lawmakers several more weeks to reach a consensus on a full-year spending bill. In the interim, federal agencies will be held to existing funding levels.“While frontline federal employees are relieved that the threat of a government shutdown has been deferred for the next nine weeks, concerns remain that there are two more funding deadlines early in 2024,” Doreen Greenwald, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, told Federal Times.The latest extension creates two deadlines stacked on top of each other. The first one, Jan. 19, applies to four bills: Agriculture-Food and Drug Administration; Energy and water; military construction and Veterans Affairs; and Transportation and Housing and Urban Development.