Opinion leaders around the country are standing up for federal employees and criticizing the administration’s plan to cancel pay raises for next year.
Newspaper editorials from Idaho to Kansas City to Arizona to Maine are documenting the damage that a federal pay freeze would have on the middle-class families in their communities.
NTEU, working with our allies on Capitol Hill, seeks to override the president’s freeze and enact an increase for 2019. The Senate has already approved a 1.9 percent bump for non-defense workers, for starters.
And these voices from well outside the Washington. D.C. beltway are helping our cause.
“There are more than 38,000 federal workers in the Kansas City region, according to the local Federal Executive Board, making the government by far the biggest local employer. In practical terms, a wage freeze for a workforce of that size would dent Kansas City’s overall economy, and it should be overturned on that basis alone,” said the Kansas City Star editorial board.
“There are more than 11,000 federal workers in Maine,” the Bangor Daily News editorial board wrote. “Trying to pay for unnecessary tax breaks for the rich by blocking raises for federal workers is wrong — and the math doesn’t add up. Congress has the power to reverse this decision. It should.”
“An efficient government needs workers who are compensated fairly and rewarded for their work. We hope Trump rethinks this pay freeze idea,” according to the editorial in the Moscow-Pullman Daily News in Idaho.
“According to Governing magazine there are over 56,000 federal employees, including postal workers, in Arizona. None of them are rich. Just about all of them are dedicated,” wrote EJ Montini of the Arizona Republic.