FederalDaily - July 21, 2006
Senate Appropriations Committee OKs
Pay Increase
The Senate Appropriations Committee July 20 approved a 2.7 percent
pay raise for federal civilian workers as part of its markup of
the fiscal 2007 Transportation-Treasury Appropriations bill. The
increase in the Senate bill matches one approved in June by the
House. President Colleen Kelley of the National Treasury Employees
Union (NTEU) called the raise "welcome recognition of the
important role fair pay has in agency recruitment and retention
efforts.” Kelley noted, however, that the increase proposed
by the White House in its 2007 budget proposal still stands a
half-percentage point lower, at 2.2 percent.
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DHS Criticized Over Misuse of Purchase
Cards
The Senate Homeland Security Committee July 19 held a hearing
to discuss a new Government Accountability Office (GAO) audit
that has found widespread abuse of DHS purchase cards handed out
to citizens and others as emergency assistance in the months before
and after Hurricane Katrina. The GAO found that 45 percent of
purchase card transactions lacked written approval, and 65 percent
could show evidence of receipt of goods or services. In one well-documented
case, an authorized card user spent $464,000 on Meals Ready To
Eat (MRE) from a vendor, when buying them from the Defense Logistics
Agency would have cost only $100,000. “GAO has uncovered
a number of inexcusable abuses of the purchase cards which are
symptomatic of the larger problems the Department of Homeland
Security has with management controls and financial oversight,”
said Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn. Lieberman and Sen. Susan Collins,
R-Maine, are pushing for the Purchase Card Waste Elimination bill.
For more, go to: www.gao.gov/new.items/d06957t.pdf.
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Postal Workers Union Rejects “Anti-Labor”
Proposals
The president of the American Postal Workers Union (APWU), William
Burrus, issued strong criticism this week of final postal reform
legislation proposed by the White House that would “cut
the rights and benefits of injured workers” and would limit
worksharing discounts made available to USPS employees. “This
is bad legislation that would do more harm to the Postal Service
and its employees than continuing under current law,” Burrus
said. At a meeting last week with lawmakers, administration officials—who
are pushing to include their changes in the conference bill—insisted
that binding arbitration between labor and management must give
way to greater consideration of the “economic health of
the Postal Service” in all USPS decision making. Burrus
said that the proposed legislation would work against the good
of the workers—and that the administration is pursuing an
“anti-worker, anti-service” agenda. For more, go to
www.apwu.org.
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