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Pay
(Salary,
Compensation, Moola, Dinero,
Sueldos, Earnings, CASH!)
Disclaimer:
It should be obvious by now, but
this is NOT an official Border
Patrol web site and the information
presented here is provided for your
use in deciding if a Border Patrol
career might be of interest to you.
The information provided is by an
individual retired agent NOT
representing the Border Patrol, the
Department of Homeland Security,
nor the US Government.
Pay Day Calendar for 2008
I am putting
this section here because so many
people have asked for the
information. I realize that a
person would be foolish if that
person were to jump into a job
without knowing something of the
pay and benefits. There is
something you need to know about
this job. If you do not BELIEVE in
what you are doing, if you are one
to have your feelings easily hurt
by a lack of public support, if you
are not a true patriot, you are NOT
going to enjoy this job. If you are
seeking the job purely for the
pecuniary benefits that it will
yield, you will not be happy. Quite
frankly, you couldn't pay me enough
to do this job if I did not meet
the criteria set forth above. On
the other hand, if I were a lotto
winner and didn't need to work at
all, I would do it for free. That's
how you need to be, as well.
Now, for the
reason you came here:
The Border
Patrol is a law enforcement
organization, therefore you work
when the law breakers work. In our
profession, they work mainly at
night. The Border Patrol kindly
compensates you for being in the
dark and having to sleep while the
rest of the world is awake. This
amount adds to your pay and is
called Night Differential. You also
work Sundays, holidays and
overtime. These also add to your
paycheck in a major way.
The one item
that you will learn to love is AUO,
or Administratively Uncontrollable
Overtime. This amounts to just
about two hours of overtime per
shift that you are expected to
perform in order to cover shift
changes and alien processing. AUO
is almost always paid at the rate
of 25% of your base pay. Now, let's
take a look at the pay schedule and
see how that 25% translates into a
living wage:
I cannot
repeat this often enough: Add
25% to those figures to
determine your actual
minimum
salary. There is a lot more to the
salary than we have space to
discuss here.
Pay Calculator
The pay
tables are linked at the bottom of
this paragraph. The first one
shows the GL pay grades to which
you will most likely be assigned.
(GL-5 or GL-7). You will
non-competitively promote to the
next higher odd-numbered pay grade
(Example: GL-7 promotes to GL-9,
GL-5 promotes to GL-7).
The table
below the GL schedule is known as
the RUS (Rest of the United States)
scale. This is the LOWEST POSSIBLE
pay you can earn as a federal law
enforcement officer with no Cost of
Living adjustments for locality.
Any other area that has a locality
pay will be higher than this. See
the official OPM pay tables for
that information. And when
you see a figure in the pay table
you are going to do WHAT?
That's correct. You are going
to multiply the amount by .25 and
add the result to the amount to
determine your MINIMUM PAY
POSSIBLE. The will be
deductions such as income tax (fed
and state), Social Security, health
insurance premiums, union dues and
all that fun stuff. However,
there will be plenty of additions
to offset those deductions, such as
FLSA, AUO, holiday pay, Sunday pay,
night differential, etc.
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