All efforts to privatize, outsource, reduce, undermine, politicize, underpay or undervalue the work performed on behalf of working families by our federal workforce should be vigorously opposed, wrote the AFL-CIO Executive Council yesterday. The council adopted a policy statement, "Federal Employees Already Have Given Enough," during its August meeting in Washington, D.C., this week. A total of 2.6 million civilian employees in the federal government do everything from making sure our veterans receive their benefits to processing Social Security payments, Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements, collection, processing, and delivery of mail and so much more. 

Salaries of federal employees, according to the council, are on average 24 percent lower than those of comparable jobs in the private sector and their health care benefits are less generous. Yet these workers are the constant targets of attacks to further freeze their pay and reduce wages and benefits. 

The council writes:

The successful campaign to reduce the compensation of federal employees began with the current unprecedented two-year pay freeze that is scheduled to expire in January, 2013. This sacrifice by federal employees already has produced $60 billion in budget savings over 10 years.

The pay freeze was followed by tax increases on federal employees in the form of a mandatory increase in their pension contributions. In February 2012, federal and postal employees were required to contribute $15 billion over 10 years, which added up to 50 percent of the cost of legislation to extend the federal unemployment benefit program. The unemployment extension bill required a 2.3 percent reduction in salary, in the form of an increased pension contribution, for employees hired after 2012. By contrast, BLS data show that among private employers that provide defined-benefit pensions such as FERS and CSRS annuities, 96 percent pay the entire cost of providing that benefit and charge the employee nothing. Federal employees already have given up $75 billion over 10 years through the two-year pay freeze and the increase in pension contributions.

Read the entire AFL-CIO Executive Council statement on federal employees here.