Union Leaders To Lawmakers: Pay Freezes, Furloughs Hit Federal Workers' Morale
Thursday, May 8, 2014(Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO)
By Mark Gruenberg, PAI Staff Writer
A three-year pay freeze, unpaid furloughs, sequestration and
congressionally ordered arbitrary increases in federal workers' pension
payments – with no increased payouts planned in the future – hit federal
workers' morale, top union leaders say.
And
that's a problem not just for the workers and their
unions, but for the country, since workers with low morale are more likely to
leave, leaving an increasingly short-staffed federal government to carry out
essential functions citizens want, add American Federation of Govern-ment
Employees President J. David Cox and Treasury Employees President Colleen
Kelley.
Cox and Kelley carried that gloomy outlook to a Senate Governmental Affairs
subcommittee hearing on May 7 on the future of the federal workforce and worker
satisfaction. The federal government employs 2.12 million workers, not counting
the 589,000 in the U.S. Postal Service – who have their own separate issues
with a postmaster general who wants to fire 100,000 of them and let another
100,000 go by attrition. AFGE and NTEU represent the largest numbers of those
non-postal federal workers. Four unions represent postal workers.
Despite the reverses and cuts and being trashed for political advantage by both
parties, workers keep coming to their jobs – everything from inspecting meat
to
treating wounded warriors to making sure people get their Social Security
payments – Cox testified. “Federal employees are a devoted and resilient
bunch,” Cox, a longtime Veterans Administration nurse before becoming his
union's
president, said. “They despise what politicians have done to them...But they
love their country, they love their jobs and they're devoted to the missions of
their agencies.”
The practical impact of the cuts is another story, he
said.
“Right now, the Montana VA Hospital in Fort Harrison is hiring a dental
assistant for $32,000 a year,” Cox told subcommittee chairman Jon Tester,
D-Mont. Thanks to the increased pension pay-ins Congress now requires from new
hires, “he'll pay $1,100 more than the same worker did three years before.
How
he'll get ahead is beyond me.” But that's not the end of it, the two union
leaders said. Cox told senators that when Congress, thanks to sequestration –
a
fancy name for GOP-imposed budget cuts – ordered agencies to cut their
budgets,
workers were furloughed without pay. Then, again thanks to an impasse over all
federal spending, the government shut down for 21 days last year. Though Cox
did not say so, GOP senators caused that, too. “Between the pay freeze, the
temporary layoffs and the shutdown, my phone was ringing off the hook with
members threatened with foreclosure, missing car payments, couldn't pay for
child care, and on and on,” he added. “Their pay is now 35% below that of
comparable positions in the private sector. How could morale be anything other
than low?” Cox asked.
“Sequestration has made it much more difficult for the federal workforce to
do
its job and complete its missions,” Kelley added. “If you want an efficient
and
effective government, don't starve it to death.” Kelley told lawmakers that
when she travels the country, her members tell her they're having to do more
and more work with fewer and fewer people. Just the Internal Revenue Service
alone, she said, is down by 10,000 workers in four years, even as lawmakers
load more responsibilities onto its front-line workers, including duties
involved with the Affordable Care Act. “But the IRS is not an exception. Loss
of personnel not only affects morale but effectiveness of agencies,” and the
workers care about that, too, union and non-partisan surveys show. The money
drain will continue, Kelley warned. “New workers must contribute 15.05% of
their salaries for the Federal Employees Retirement System, Medicare, Social
Security” and other required paycheck withholding, she said. Democratic
President Barack Obama proposed a 1% pay hike for the feds this year. Both
unions say that's not enough, with Kelley advocating legislation introduced to
increase pay by 3.3%. “That will be a small catchup for those who have to do
a
lot more with a lot less,” she commented.
The union leaders' description of their members' morale was in sharp contrast
to testimony from federal personnel managers. Office of Personnel Management
Director Katherine Archuleta painted a generally positive picture. One
exception: The Defense Department. “The department's civilian employee morale
has been negatively affected by many factors,” admitted Paige Hinkle-Bowles,
DOD's #2 civilian personnel official. Bowles also warned that DOD, like the
rest of the government, faces a retirement crunch, with 35% of its 900,000
civilian workers eligible to leave in the next five years – a point Cox
seconded when speaking about his old shop, the VA.
Archuleta and Bowles did not stay around to hear Cox and Kelley. The Democratic
senators on the panel were generally sympathetic to the union leaders'
comments, and raised other personnel problems within the federal workforce –
such as if a former federal worker goes to the private sector and contributes
into Social Security, his or her later Social Security checks are docked. That
happens to teachers in his state, too, Sen. Mark Begich, D-Alaska, said. The
one GOP senator at the hearing, Robert Portman of Ohio, a former federal budget
official, did not stay around for the union leaders'
testimony.