DOD still working on plan to hand out back pay

[unhappycamper]

DOD still working on plan to hand out back pay
By Matt Millham, Stars and Stripes
European edition, Saturday, May 31, 2008

The Defense Department is working on a plan to dole out millions of dollars in back pay to thousands of overseas employees who were erroneously underpaid for more than a decade, according to a department spokesman.

But, "It will likely be several weeks before the back pay guidance is ready for release," the spokesman, Lt. Col. Les’ Melnyk, wrote in an e-mail Thursday.

From 1995 until about a month ago, five of the department’s six major nonappropriated fund employers were not paying a mandatory cost-of-living allowance to Americans hired overseas for regular full-time jobs. The allowance, known officially as post allowance, is meant to offset some of the expense of living in high-cost areas.

In March, the department ordered wayward employers — the Army and Air Force Exchange Service, the Navy Exchange Service Command, Navy Installations Command, Air Force Services and the U.S. Marine Corps — to begin payments immediately.

An estimated 2,850 additional employees across DOD are now eligible for the allowance, according to Melnyk. Payments going forward will cost roughly $21.5 million a year based on estimated costs for 2008, he said.


Rest of article at: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=55218