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Washington, D.C. –The head of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) today called outrageous a congressional plan to fund an extension of unemployment compensation benefits as part of a payroll tax holiday bill with cuts totaling $15 billion to federal employee pensions.

“It is absolutely outrageous that federal employees—already sacrificing $60 billion through a two-year pay freeze—would be hit again while the wealthiest and corporations continue to be shielded from any contribution to our fiscal problems at all,” said NTEU President Colleen M. Kelley.

“Coupled with the two-year pay freeze,” she added, “proposed changes in the federal pension system would result in real, permanent and meaningful declines in employee take-home pay and standards of living for federal employees.”

If anything, Kelley said, “the corporations that moved jobs overseas and downsized in search of additional profits should bear the cost of extending unemployment benefits to those suffering from the joblessness they caused.” At the very least, the costs should be broadly-shared, particularly by those who have yet to make any meaningful contributions to deficit reduction, Kelley said.

The NTEU leader attacked the approach of using the pay and benefits of federal employees to subsidize unemployment compensation as defeating the entire purpose of the stimulus effect of a tax holiday.

“We would be taking money from a group of middle class working people who are suffering in the same economic ways as other Americans to fund an extension of the unemployment benefits,” Kelley said. “It makes no sense to ask federal employees to make this further contribution. At the end of the day, it is simply a pay cut for federal employees.”

The NTEU leader made these points in a press conference today.

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