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Federal investigators looking at how certain agencies use their special authority to offer higher salaries for hard-to-fill technical slots have discovered that many scientists and engineers are actually taking pay cuts to join the government. Some 35 percent of the people hired during 1987-88 under these rules agreed to pay cuts, some exceeding $20,000, according to the General Accounting Office ("Federal Recruiting and Hiring," GAO/GGD, 91-22). GAO's Don Allison, technical analyst for the report, speculates that greater job security and a less strenuous work environment could be factors in their decisions, which he terms "absolutely surprising to me." The survey looked at the 10 installations that use this special hiring authority most frequently; the list includes five NASA research centers, the National Institutes of Health, and Argonne ...
