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                         November 21, 2001

NEWS BRIEFS

Training holiday

WEST POINT -- The Thanksgiving post-wide training holiday for all uniformed personnel at the U.S. Military Academy is Friday.

Major Activity Directors of MEDDAC and DENTAC will establish duty requirements that meet their operational needs.

Supervisors are encouraged to grant annual leave or leave-without-pay to civilian employees who request the day off.

Retirement incentives

WASHINGTON (FEDWEEK) -- Two bills intended to encourage all CSRS employees to retire by 2003 are currently moving through Congress.

The Senate version is the "50-50" bill which offers 5 years, no penalty time, added to tenure and age along with a $50,000 incentive bonus.

The House version offers the same 5 year addition to tenure and age, but sweetens the pot with a 75 percent of basic pay plan that will be extremely hard for most workers to refuse.

According to Washington officials, the final version will probably contain portions of both bills. Employees can write directly to their elected representatives to urge support for these bills at capwiz.com/govexec/issues/bills.

Military pay increase on the way

WASHINGTON (Armed Forces News) -- House and Senate conferees working on the fiscal 2002 National Defense Authorization Bill have approved the military pay raise portion, which includes raises of at least 5 percent.

After the remainder of the bill is hammered out, it must go to the floor. When approved it could take up to 45 days to implement the raises, so it is not certain that they will be in the January paychecks.

The plan would provide minimum raises of 5 percent for officers and 6 percent for enlisted members, with larger amounts targeted to midgrade and senior enlisted members, midgrade officers and warrant officers.