Home Media Center News Releases

Washington, D.C.—The head of the nation’s largest independent union of federal employees has called on the congressional deficit-reduction super-committee to oppose proposals adversely affecting the pensions or health programs of federal workers and to help maintain an adequate federal workforce.

In a letter to each of 12 members of the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, President Colleen M. Kelley of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) emphasized that “federal employees didn’t cause this (economic) crisis, and the crisis won’t be solved by cuts to federal employees.”

She reminded the bipartisan group of six House members and six senators that “the very first budget reduction move” was to freeze federal pay for two years “despite the fact that federal pay has been documented as 23 percent below similar private sector jobs.”

Instead, President Kelley urged the super-committee to “consider a similar balanced approach” to the one put forward in the budget outline prepared by the Senate Budget Committee. That document, she said, “achieved significant deficit reduction without devastating new cuts to federal compensation and benefits”.

For one thing, Kelley said, that committee’s approach “recognized that the (Federal Employees Retirement System) is very much in line with private sector retirement plans, and has been referred to as a model retirement program.” Further, she pointed out that its outline “rejected changes to the federal health benefits program that would further reduce frozen salaries.”

On the matter of sufficient resources and personnel for federal agencies, the NTEU leader emphasized the detrimental impact significant cuts in either would have on service to the public. For example, she said, in the 25 months ending in October 2010 the number of Social Security disability claims pending decision rose by some 53 percent, to nearly 852,000. Meanwhile, wait times for decision among this vulnerable population declined from 532 days in August, 2008 to 377 days in October 2010. “Cutting personnel will likely halt that progress,” she said.

Moreover, President Kelley pointed out that in 1995, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) had a staff of 114,018 to administer the tax laws and process 205 million tax returns. Today, the IRS has 93,337 employees, yet must process some 236 million much more complicated tax returns.

She also offered this example: In 1978, Food and Drug Administration (FDA) resources permitted 35,000 food inspections; by contrast, that number declined last year to only some 7,500 for this chronically underfunded agency. That has occurred, she told super-committee members, despite the fact that “FDA’s enormous responsibility to monitor our food supply has been seriously challenged, as recent scares with tomatoes, lettuce, spinach and pet food have shown.”

President Kelley said NTEU believes that “shared sacrifice among the rest of the American population should be discussed before demanding further cuts from the federal workforce.” She added: “A plan that does not include closing tax loopholes for oil companies or corporate jets or for other groups in the top one percent of income in this country while imposing additional cuts on middle-class federal workers is simply not fair.”

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