CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. — TVA is freezing the base pay of about 3,500 managers and specialists until 2013.
Tennessee Valley Authority President Tom Kilgore said Monday the federal utility is joining the two-year pay freeze that Congress adopted for 2 million other federal employees.
The move will not affect TVA members like 4-County Electric Power Association, said 4-County spokesman Jon Turner.
Although TVA is a federal utility, it no longer receives direct government appropriations, so the move won”t save the federal government money.
“Economic conditions in the Tennessee Valley region and across the nation are of great concern, and it is important that everyone pull together,” Kilgore told employees.
But there are numerous exceptions to the freeze, according to the Chattanooga Times Free Press.
For instance, the freeze won”t affect the 8,600 workers who are represented by labor unions, which negotiate their own contracts with TVA.
TVA already granted its unionized white-collar workers wage increases averaging 2.9 percent, effective with the start of the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1. Electricians, laborers and other blue-collar employees will get varying pay raises averaging 2.5 percent to 3 percent under wage agreements negotiated to start Jan. 1.
And Kilgore won”t have to give up any of his $3.6 million pay for the fiscal year ended on Sept. 30. And he still will be eligible for a $200,000 raise in the current fiscal year if he meets all of TVA”s performance targets.
“I respect the work that Mr. Kilgore does, but if he wants a sacrifice he ought to give back part of the bonus he just got,” said Bradley County Commissioner Jeff Yarbor, who authored a resolution adopted in Bradley County opposing the CEO”s pay package.
Kilgore is the highest-paid federal employee in the U.S., but he is still paid less than his private sector counterparts, according to the compensation consulting firm Towers Watson, which advises TVA.
In 2010, TVA employee raises averaged twice as much as the U.S. private sector average, according to government figures. And bonuses awarded this fall averaged $6,917 for all TVA full-time workers.
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