H.R. 2346: Overseas Pay Gap: Gone, Gone, Gone …

Well, not forever gone yet. The President released a brief statement after signing H.R. 2346 in the Oval Office on June 24. 2009:

"I want to thank the Members of Congress who put politics aside and stood up to support a bill that will provide for the safety of our troops and the American people. This legislation will make available the funding necessary to bring the war in Iraq to a responsible end, defeat terrorist networks in Afghanistan, and further prepare our nation in the event of a continued outbreak of the H1N1 pandemic flu."

Now it’s done. This one.

Here is what AFSA said about the overseas comparability pay implementation earlier, which is part of H.R. 2346.

Today AFSA has more via AFSANet:

[…] We have succeeded in achieving the first phase of our members number-one objective of getting Congress and the Administration to correct the historical injustice of excluding Foreign Service members posted overseas from the locality pay that all other federal employees assigned domestically receive. The Department of State and other foreign affairs agencies should now move quickly to close the first roughly ONE-THIRD tranche of that 23.1 percent pay gap in the current fiscal year. This should translate into a base salary increase in the vicinity of 7.7 percent, by October 1, for all Foreign Service members FS-01 and below assigned overseas. Ideally, this adjustment will be followed by similar measures in FY2010 and FY2011 to address the second and third tranches of the pay disparity. AFSA will work hard to make sure that happens.