The Nation - News from Aug. 23, 1989

The President’s Advisory Commission on Federal Pay said that the pay gap between the federal government and the private sector has grown to 28.6%, the Washington Post reported. The cost of implementing a pay increase of that magnitude would be $35 billion in the first year, according to the Office of Personnel Management. Congress has agreed on a 3.6% annual increase next January, and the White House is expected to go along. The annual report is supposed to trigger an automatic increase to bring federal employees up to “comparability” with private workers. However, federal workers have not received full comparability increases since 1977.