Federal employee union leaders threw the second of a one-two punch at a Senate plan to tax health insurance premiums on Tuesday, saying it would mean significant benefit cuts and higher health costs for workers. The presidents of the American Federation of Government Employees, the American Postal Workers Union and the National Association of Letter Carriers joined with the Communications Workers ...

Congressional negotiators sealed agreement Tuesday night on sweeping spending legislation that would fund agencies into the new year. The $1.1 trillion dollar spending bill includes a 2.0 percent federal employee pay adjustment, including a 1.5 percent nationwide increase in base pay and a 0.5 percent average increase in locality pay. It would combine six of 12 appropriations measures for fiscal 2010. ...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Congressional negotiators sealed agreement Tuesday night on sweeping spending legislation that boosts housing and heating subsidies but curbs President Barack Obama's requests for aid to Afghanistan and Pakistan. The move comes as lawmakers wrapped the budgets of nine Cabinet agencies into a $1.1 trillion spending bill they hope to complete before a stopgap measure expires Dec. 18. The ...

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) - An Army captain from Oregon pleaded guilty Monday to charges that he stole nearly $700,000 from the U.S. government while serving in Iraq. U.S. District Court Judge Ancer Haggerty set sentencing for March 1 after Capt. Michael Dung Nguyen entered guilty pleas to theft and money-laundering charges. The maximum sentence for each offense is 10 years in ...

RICHMOND, Va. - New numbers show more workplace injuries and illnesses were reported in Virginia from those in government jobs than in the private sector in 2008. According to a Virginia Department of Labor and Industry report released Monday, 97,900 workers were injured or became ill on the job in 2008. That's down from 104,200 in the previous year, Of those, ...

The General Services Administration's Office of the Inspector General says its work in the second half of fiscal 2009 saved the agency more than $466 million. In its semiannual report to Congress, covering April 1 to Sept. 30, the inspector general said it made more than $268 million in financial recommendations for better use of government funds. The office also made ...

WASHINGTON — The unemployment rate fell to 10 percent in November as employers cut the smallest number of jobs since the recession began. The Labor Department says the economy shed 11,000 jobs last month, an improvement from October's revised total of 111,000. That's also much better than the 130,000 Wall Street economists expected. But the respite may be temporary, as many ...

Federal employees saved more money between March and September than the general population, according to a new survey from a financial firm. On average, fed workers contributed $2,289 per month to their savings -- either through short-term, long-term or retirement savings accounts -- during the six-month period studied by First Command Financial Services, a firm that serves military and public sector ...

Between November and January, federal employees tend to think more about how they will use their leave than how they accrue it. But as personnel officials weigh hiring reforms, and existing flexibilities for enticing promising applicants to federal service, one leave policy raises concerns about how managers should be negotiating more strategically with new hires and how accrual rates vary across ...

One of the good things about being a federal employee is the large number of health insurance companies available to them. One of the difficult things about being a federal employee is picking from the large number of health insurance companies available to them. Difficult isn't the same as bad, but it can be confusing. Even so, as government workers face ...

President Obama plans to freeze locality pay rates at 2009 levels for civilian federal employees in 2010, a move that has prompted protests from government employee groups. In a letter sent to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Vice President Joe Biden on Monday, Obama said federal employees nationwide would receive a 2 percent increase in their base pay in 2010, ...

QUANTICO, Va. - Prince William County is looking to attract more defense-related businesses to the areas around nearby military bases. "We're starting to see quite a lot of interest in and around Quantico Marine Corps Base and in the northern part of Route 1, close to Fort Belvoir," says Prince William County Board of Supervisors Chairman Corey A. Stewart. The county ...

President Obama will win no fans among federal workers with his action to limit their pay increase next year to 2 percent. That's a long way from the 18.9 percent average raise Obama said many government workers would have received using a complicated statutory formula designed to make federal pay more comparable to private-sector compensation. "Our country continues to face serious ...

Jurors in the theft trial of Sheila Dixon convicted the Baltimore mayor Tuesday on a single charge of taking gift cards intended for the city's poor. Although Dixon was acquitted of a felony theft charge, her conviction could force her from office. Jurors deliberated more than six days after hearing the Democrat was accused of using or keeping $630 worth of ...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Federal employees whose regional costs of living entitles them to higher compensation will see no increase in their "locality pay" percentages next year, President Barack Obama informed Congress on Monday. Workers who receive pay over and above the base federal rates _ because of higher living costs and greater private-sector pay in their regions _ would have been ...

Washington, DC - Administration officials continued their efforts to educate and employ veterans that began with President Barack Obama's recent signing of an Executive Order which will provide thousands of jobs for veterans and transitioning military service members. During a press conference at the Department of Labor that included a standing-room only crowd of representatives from Veteran's Service Organizations, veterans and ...

The Government Accountability Office has again found widespread flaws in how the office administering Medicare and Medicaid manages contracts. The watchdog agency studied a random sample of contract actions at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and estimated that more than 84 percent of fiscal 2008 contract actions had at least one instance where officials failed to implement a key ...

When President Obama signed legislation that repealed the National Security Personnel System, on a warm day in late October, the Rose Garden celebration seemed like a bit of a letdown. The rollback of the controversial Defense Department pay program was just one of many federal employee provisions bundled into the fiscal 2010 National Defense Authorization Act and was largely overshadowed by ...

A new rule giving agencies authority to hire acquisition employees directly could aid the Obama administration's efforts to bring contract jobs back in-house, and could inform the conversation about hiring reform, according to federal workforce advocates. In a Federal Register notice published on Tuesday, the Office of Personnel Management finalized a regulation extending direct hire authority for procurement jobs. The rule ...

Federal agencies soon will be required to create dashboards on their Web sites tracking the amount of money they have spent on improper payments, under a new directive from President Obama. The executive order -- which Office of Management and Budget Director Peter R. Orszag previewed last week -- is aimed at increasing the transparency and public scrutiny of payments to ...