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Washington, D.C. –The Federal Postal Coalition, representing five million federal and postal employees and retirees, is calling on the House of Representatives to reject pending transportation legislation containing a provision that funds portions of the bill with cuts to federal pensions. The National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) is a member of this group.

In a letter to House members, the coalition said H.R. 7, the American Energy and Infrastructure Jobs Act, “is a blatant and cynical attempt to require public employees to bear the burden of financing public infrastructure.”

The effort to offset a significant share of the cost of H.R. 7 by adding pension-gutting provisions from other legislation approved by the House sets “a dangerous precedent that civil servants should serve as the ‘pay-for’ regardless of whether legislation impacts the federal workforce.”

The coalition letter followed one sent to every member of the House by NTEU President Colleen M. Kelley earlier this week, expressing her strong opposition to the move and criticizing the approach of using federal pay and pensions as a “piggy bank” to fund transportation projects.

In it, President Kelley aimed sharp criticism at proponents of the pension-cutting bill, H.R. 3813, who claimed it would assist in deficit reduction. Now that its intended use is to fund the transportation bill, the idea of tying cuts in federal employee pensions to deficit reduction efforts “appears to no longer be true,” she said.

The Federal-Postal Coalition reminded House members that federal employees already are contributing $60 billion over 10 years to deficit reduction under a pay freeze through the end of the year—and said H.R. 7, as currently structured, would take another $44 billion from federal employees.

“These reductions in retirement benefits are a vicious assault on over two million workers currently employed by the federal government,” the coalition wrote. “They are already making significant contributions toward reducing government costs, both in their personal lives by sacrificing a pay raise for two years, and in their professional lives. Further cuts like the ones proposed to pay for H.R. 7 will impair the government’s ability to attract and retain the best and the brightest in public service.”

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