Federal Employees

Federal Employees

Government considering changing injury pay for federal employees

The Labor Department is studying and considering changes in the way federal employees are compensated if they are injured on the job, said a report by the Government Accountability Office.

Currently, employees with a dependent at home receive 75 percent of their normal wage while recovering from an injury. Employees without a dependent only get 66 and two-thirds percent. The Labor Department is considering setting a universal rate of 70 percent.

In 2010, the government gave nearly $1.9 billion to federal employees who were injured on the job or contracted a work-related disease, the GAO said. The US Postal Service had the largest group given compensation - 43 percent of beneficiaries worked for the nation's mail service.

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UPDATED 15:03 PM EDT, August 1, 2012

Flu protection for federal workers improving, report says

Almost all federal agencies have plans in place to protect their employees in the event of an influenza outbreak, said a report by the Government Accountability Office, but there is limited oversight of the plans themselves.  Agencies need to make sure that evaluations of employees' possible exposure to the flu and plans to protect them are regularly updated, the report said.

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UPDATED 11:32 AM EDT, July 24, 2012

Payment studies find very different results, GAO says

Studies to determine what government employees have the highest pay - and determine the gap between them and lower wage federal workers - have come up with widely different results based on the criteria that they use to analyze pay scales, said a report by the Government Accountability Office.

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