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Washington, D.C. — In the midst of the payroll tax holiday discussions, the leader of the nation’s largest independent federal employees union called on the House to reject further cuts to middle-class federal employees just to protect millionaires and billionaires from any sacrifice at all.

“Federal employees have contributed $60 billion to deficit reduction, through a two-year pay freeze,” said President Colleen M. Kelley of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) in a letter today to members of the House of Representatives. “Yet, the original version of HR 3630 which passed the House, seeks to have them contribute $65 billion more through cuts to their pay and benefits, while preventing even the smallest contribution from millionaires and billionaires.”

Noting that many federal employees are not even eligible to get the payroll tax reduction because they are not covered by Social Security, Kelley condemned the offsets in the House-passed version of the payroll tax holiday legislation (H.R. 3630).

For all current federal employees, the House bill seeks a one-year extension of the federal pay freeze through 2013; a 1.5 percent increase in employee pension contributions, phased in over three years; and the elimination of the social security supplement effective January 1, 2013, except for those with mandatory retirement ages. Additionally, the bill creates a new class of employee, new hires with less than five years of federal service, called “secure annuity employees.” Those employees would see pension contribution increases of 3.2 percent; pensions based on high five years of service, rather than high three and an annuity “multiplier” reduction that would lower pension values by roughly 30 percent, effective January 2013.

The Senate passed, in a vote of 89 to 10, a bipartisan alternative with no cuts to federal employee pay and retirement.

“It is wrong to insist on protecting the wealthy and cutting federal pay and benefits when this bipartisan alternative exists,” Kelley wrote.

The NTEU president added: “Federal employees are working with severely limited resources. They have faced government shutdowns four times this year. Yet, they have worked diligently to deliver services to the public. To ask them to bear such a disproportionate additional burden in offsetting a payroll tax reduction, while the rich remain completely untouched is unfair and unacceptable.”

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