Your editorial concerning pay for federal employees (“Congress must extend pay for performance to federal employees,” July 6, 2006) mistakenly assumes that employee performance doesn’t count in determining pay in the federal sector—or in the delivery of quality services the public wants, needs, expects and deserves. Both assumptions are a disservice to the men and women who have chosen public service at the federal level.

The current federal pay system includes a performance-based component as well as a labor market-based component. Employees must meet performance goals before receiving a merit increase. As I said in congressional testimony, NTEU believes it is entirely appropriate to withhold these pay raises for employees who are not performing successfully.

But there is a broader issue here. It is the effective and efficient delivery of meaningful services to the American people. Clearly, as our society has become increasingly more complex, and especially with the explosive growth of technology, the delivery of government services has, of necessity, become more complex as well.

Federal agencies are acknowledged to employ some of the world’s leading practitioners in their fields—whether they work as microbiologists for the Food and Drug Administration, as experts in untangling complex financial transactions on the staff of the Securities and Exchange Commission or the Internal Revenue Service, or in any of hundreds of other capacities.

These men and women would be welcomed as employees in any private sector enterprise. Their choice of public service benefits us all. But to recruit and retain them, agencies have learned they must compensate them fairly and competitively. Congress recognized this in 1990, with its bipartisan approval of the Federal Employees Pay Comparability Act (FEPCA), designed to make federal agency pay competitive with the private sector.

The concern underlying FEPCA was well-founded then—and is even more so today, as increasing numbers of federal workers reach retirement eligibility and decreasing numbers of young, talented employees look to government service as a potential career.

One reason for that, of course, is the lack of competitive pay. For numerous reasons FEPCA has never been fully implemented, thus its goal of bringing federal pay up to the same levels as pay in the private sector is yet to be realized. The private sector has the capability to outbid the government for the best employees.

The real need in the federal sector is for Congress to fully fund the human resource options agencies already have in both law and regulation—and for agencies to use those flexibilities. Along with competitive pay, such tools as recruitment and retention bonuses, relocation allowances, student loan repayment programs and the like would help ensure a continuing flow of talented, dedicated employees into positions in the federal government. The bottom line is this: as a nation, we truly can’t afford to do any less.