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Washington, D.C. –The leader of the nation’s largest independent union of federal employees today called on House members to reject the payroll tax holiday bill, H.R. 3630, because it unfairly singles out federal employees to offset fully half the cost of the bill’s provision extending unemployment compensation benefits while there are no offsets for the payroll tax holiday extension.

“Federal employees are in the second year of a two-year pay freeze that is contributing $60 billion to deficit reduction,” wrote President Colleen M. Kelley in a letter to House members. “It is unconscionable to come back to them for a second $15 billion hit, while no other groups have been asked to sacrifice.”

Under the agreement reached by a conference committee, “millionaires and billionaires continue to keep their tax cuts and the corporations that have shipped jobs overseas keep their tax loopholes,” Kelley wrote. “But the middle class federal employees who guard our borders, keep our food and water safe and protect our financial systems will get a 2.3 percent pay cut due to increases in pension contributions with no increase in benefits.”

The NTEU leader emphasized that while the extensions of the payroll tax holiday and unemployment compensation benefits will last another 10 months, to the end of 2012, “the loss to a new federal employee making $50,000 a year is $1,000 per year—every year for the rest of their career.”

She added: “This is not shared sacrifice; it is targeting one group of middle class workers for an extremely disproportionate burden.”

Earlier, President Kelley called it “unjust” to permanently raise the pension contributions of federal employees to pay for temporarily extending unemployment compensation benefits for jobless Americans, and argued that such a move jeopardizes the effectiveness of the federal retirement system.

The Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS) provides a modest, middle-class retirement security to its workers. It has no unfunded liability.

A substantially increased employee contribution, she said, very likely would prevent employees from contributing to the federal Thrift Savings Plan, one of the three parts that make up the FERS system. The effect will be to minimize, at best, one of the three sources of retirement income for employees—and, at worst, eliminate it.

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