Continuing the Pay Equity Fight Between AUSAs, Main Justice Attorneys
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The prompt for this round of the FEDforum is: What is the issue most important to your organization? This week, hear from the National Association of Assistant United States Attorneys (NAAUSA).
For over 30 years, Assistant U.S. Attorneys have identified pay parity issues as a detriment to their workplace wellbeing. AUSAs remain significantly under compensated compared to attorneys at the Department of Justice (main Justice attorneys). Since NAAUSA’s founding in 1992, we have fought to ensure pay parity for AUSAs, not only to advance equity, but also to improve the recruitment and retention of our nation’s career federal prosecutors and civil attorneys.
NAAUSA has engaged in robust conversations with the Department of Justice and Attorney General’s Advisory Committee regarding the systemic problems with the Administratively Determined (AD) pay schedule. While most federal employees, including main Justice attorneys, are paid under the General Schedule (GS), the AD schedule retains a complex and antiquated pay system that results in under compensation for AUSAs.
The current discrepancies between the GS scale and the AD schedule result in, at times, an over $40,000 gap in minimum pay between GS level employees and AUSAs in the AD schedule. The gap is most significant for more junior AUSAs who often struggle with other financial obligations such as student loan debt.
The gap in pay results in significant recruitment and retention challenges for U.S. Attorney Offices. In the Partnership for Public Service’s Best Places to Work in the Federal Government survey, while U.S. Attorney’s Office reported above median and upper quartile scores in nearly every category since 2007, pay satisfaction has seen lower quartile scores in 11 of the last 12 survey years. In 2019, U.S. Attorneys’ Offices ranked 350 of 415 in agency subcomponents regarding attitudes toward pay.
Many AUSAs leave their offices for careers at main Justice or are lured to the private defense bar and immediately begin litigating against the government. In these cases, taxpayers invest in training employees, only for them to be used against the government.
Congress has consistently allocated additional funds toward U.S. Attorney Offices to cover the salary and expenses of Assistant U.S. Attorneys (AUSAs). However, this money has overwhelmingly been spent on hiring and onboarding additional AUSAs rather than toward appropriately compensating the current cadre of AUSAs. As a result, the significant and damaging pay inequity between AUSAs and other Department of Justice attorneys lives on.
Based on NAAUSA advocacy efforts, the DOJ made minor adjustments to the AD pay scale in 2016. It is noteworthy that immediately after this adjustment was made, Best Place to Work survey scores regarding pay improved – indicating this issue is of high importance to AUSAs and can be rectified. However, these minor adjustments did not come close to bridging the gap between pay scales. The outdated AD model continues to result in significant pay disparities and, therefore, NAAUSA continues to advocate for reform.
As our nation faces more evolved forms of federal criminal activity, such as domestic terrorism, cybercrime and drug smuggling networks, it is imperative we have a knowledgeable, experienced class of litigators able to prosecute these criminals working in U.S. Attorney Offices as AUSAs. The current pay system over relies on the goodwill on AUSAs who are willing to take a pay cut to serve their country. This is unsustainable and places our U.S. Attorney Offices at a disadvantage in the recruitment and retention of qualified personnel. Without top talent our criminal justice system cannot adequately serve and protect the American people.
The Department of Justice has recently admitted to NAAUSA that the compensation disparity between AUSAs and main Justice attorneys is real and could be closed with an investment of a mere $42 million per year. As a result, NAUSSA wrote to member of the Senate and House Appropriations Committees ahead of FY 2022 funding discussions encouraging them to:
Engage the Department and EOUSA regarding pay disparity. The Department should be able to produce evidence and data supporting its positions and should answer why AUSA pay inequity is fair.
Request the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to study pay equity at the Department of Justice, including between the AD and GS pay systems.
Authorize additional appropriations for EOUSA specifically to close the attorney pay gap.
NAAUSA sees the real impact of workforce churn, staff attrition with loss of expertise, and decreased morale at U.S. Attorney Offices on national security. We also see this inequity as unnecessary and unfair. Pay parity between AUSAs and main Justice attorneys remains a critical priority so our nation’s AUSAs can serve their country without fear of financial distress.
This column from the National Association of Assistant U.S. Attorneys (NAAUSA) is part of the FEDforum, an initiative to unite voices across the federal community. The FEDforum is a space for federal employee groups to share their organizations’ initiatives and activities with the FEDagent audience.
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