Isle lawsuit
seeks pay equity

The suit challenges a 1990
law regarding retirement pay
for federal workers

Such benefits are claimed
to be at least 10 percent higher
for mainland peers

Federal workers in Hawaii and Alaska are shortchanged in their retirement pay because of a 1990 law attacked as unconstitutional in a lawsuit filed yesterday in U.S. District Court in Honolulu.

Honolulu attorney Margery Bronster said a mainland retiree would get at least 10 percent more retirement pay than his island peer because of "locality pay" added to the basic federal salary. It could be as much as 25 percent higher if the mainland worker's career was in a high-pay area such as San Francisco.

Workers in Hawaii and Alaska were excluded from provisions of the Federal Employees Pay Comparability Act of 1990. The law aimed to narrow the pay gap between federal and nonfederal salaries by adding "locality pay" for jobs throughout the continental United States. The suit asks the court to declare the exclusion to be "arbitrary, unconstitutional and invalid."

The suit names 10 plaintiffs, including three Hawaii residents, but seeks status as a class-action suit on behalf of about 22,000 federal employees in Hawaii and Alaska.

The base pay of Hawaii and Alaska workers is increased by a cost-of-living allowance, but that extra pay is not counted in calculating retirement benefits.

The suit asks the court to find that interpretation by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management to be "unconstitutional and invalid" and force the agency to include COLA in calculating retirement pay.

"Where it really hurts these people is when they retire," Bronster said. "Some of the plaintiffs have picked up and moved to the mainland in order to build that bump into the highest rate for retirement."

Retirement pay varies widely based on time in service and the position held, Bronster said, but "an IRS clerk in Omaha would collect at least 10 percent higher retirement pay than an IRS clerk in Hawaii with the exact same job experience."

COLA for workers outside the continental United States predates the 1990 law. Pay is adjusted to compensate for living costs substantially higher than in the District of Columbia or for working conditions substantially different from the continental United States, or as a recruitment incentive.

"COLA is a different thing from locality pay," Bronster said. "It's hard to fathom why Hawaii and Alaska employees are not eligible for even the minimum."

Differing locality amounts are established for about 30 regions, and for workers in the "rest of the United States, it is at least a 10 percent pay bump," she said.

The plaintiffs include Michael McCrary and Russell Holland, both Hawaii residents in federal jobs here; Joyce Matsuo of Hawaii, who retired from a federal job last year; Roy Matsuo, who moved from a federal job in Hawaii to one in California; and Ronald Franklin and Charles Roberts, who changed their federal employment from Hawaii to Virginia.

The suit seeks back pay for all employees affected since the law went into effect 15 years ago as well as "damages resulting from the violations of the class members' constitutional rights."