Home Media Center News Releases

Washington, D.C.—A multi-member coalition of organizations representing millions of federal and postal employees and retirees, including the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU), urged budget conference committee chairs not to cut the take-home pay of financially struggling federal workers as part of a budget deal for the fiscal year 2014.

In a letter to committee chairs Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), the nearly 30-member Federal-Postal Coalition expressed strong opposition to any changes to federal employee pensions that would increase contributions or reduce benefits.

The group, representing managers as well as frontline employees and retirees, reminded the chairs of the sacrifices of over $113 billion federal workers have made toward deficit reduction through a three-year pay freeze and increased pension contributions by new hires, in addition to up to eight unpaid furlough days and a 16-day government shutdown.

“Given these contributions, we are dismayed to learn that increasing the pension contributions and/or changing the retirement formula for current federal employees is on the table in the budget conference discussions designed to finance a two-year lifting of sequestration,” the letter stated. “The proposal would effectively cut the take-home pay of federal employees who are already struggling financially. Some refer to these changes as ‘fees’ on the federal workforce. Make no mistake about it – this is a tax on federal employees pure and simple; the only constituency who would be taxed under your proposed budget.”

The coalition added, “This is simply unacceptable. No other group of Americans has contributed to deficit reduction the way federal employees have. It is time for Congress to do its job and find other ways to reduce the deficit than continually taking from our members whose only sin has been to dedicate their lives to federal service.”

Today’s coalition letter follows a similar one sent to budget conferees last week by NTEU President Colleen M. Kelley warning of the negative fallout of increasing pension contributions for federal workers. “Requiring them to continue to bear such a disproportionate burden of deficit reduction, which they did not cause, is grossly unfair and will lead to a recruitment and retention crisis in the federal workforce,” the NTEU leader said.

NTEU is the nation’s largest independent federal union, representing 150,000 employees in 31 agencies and departments.