THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, November 22, 1995 TAG: 9511220536
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A7 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: KNIGHT-RIDDER NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium: 52 lines
Hundreds of thousands of federal workers are paid more than their job descriptions say they are worth, a controversial new government study suggests.
Minority workers are more likely to benefit from these pay distortions than white workers, concluded auditors for the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress. But women were more likely to be underpaid than men when their actual work was compared with official pay standards.
Among the explanations: Many supervisors pushed federal workers into higher pay levels than their jobs justify, investigators suspect. Generally, that was to get around puny pay raises approved by Congress in the 1980s or to help workers who had bumped into federal pay ceilings.
Women tend to be underpaid, personnel experts speculate, because their work was less valued when their jobs and pay were defined in the 1970s. Where minority workers are overcompensated, that may be caused by supervisors who are fearful of bias charges.
The GAO's findings, challenged by the government's own personnel agency, suggest billions of payroll dollars are being misspent annually. Washington may also be depressing women's pay, at least in many service and support jobs, and fostering minority dependence on federal employment.
The five-year study, on which the GAO spent nearly $2 million, reflects the treatment of 369,000 federal office workers, most in nonmanagement jobs such as secretaries, medical clerks and auditors.
In less-precisely defined management and blue collar jobs, disparities caused by sex, race and pay grade are probably even greater, said Nancy Kingsbury, senior GAO supervisor of the work.
She offered no explanation of the politically sensitive results. Among them:
Jobs dominated by women workers were almost twice as likely to be graded too low in pay as they were to be accurately graded or overgraded. These included secretaries, accounting technicians and nursing assistants.
Jobs heavily populated by minority workers were more than twice as likely to be overgraded. These included Equal Employment Opportunity counselors, computer operators and Border Patrol agents.
Four out of five office workers above the average pay grade - GS-9 in ``federalese'' - were paid more than GAO considered their due.
Nearly half the workers in lower-tier support jobs, GS-7 or lower, were paid less than GAO thought they were worth. by CNB