Union leaders slam federal budget deal
WASHINGTON, D.C. (PAI)—
Government workers’ union leaders
and AFL-CIO President Richard
Trumka slammed the federal budget
deal top lawmakers reached Dec. 10,
saying it unfairly hits the nation’s 2 mil-
lion federal workers — who have borne
the brunt of prior budget cuts.
And Trumka hit Congress for refus-
ing to ask those who have gained the
most from the slow economic recovery
— the rich and Wall Streeters who
caused the crash — to pay their fair
share of the recovery’s costs, including
extending jobless benefits.
But lawmakers paid little heed to la-
bor’s outcry. The GOP-run House ad-
vanced the two-year budget deal Dec.
12 by a vote of 332-94.
Sixty-two House Republicans and
32 Democrats voted against the bill.
Among them were Oregon Democrats
Kurt Shrader and Peter DeFazio.
The Senate was considering the
measure as this issue of the Labor Press
went to press. The Democratic-run
chamber is expected to approve the bill,
and President Barack Obama said he
will sign it.
Many lawmakers who backed the
measure criticized key sections of it —
such as requiring federal workers to pay
more for their pensions, and refusal to
extend federal jobless benefits beyond
their Dec. 28 end. More than 1.3 mil-
lion people will be impacted.
The two-year bipartisan agreement
sets non-entitlement spending at $1.012
trillion for the fiscal year that began
DECEMBER 20, 2013
Oct. 1, and $1.014 trillion for the year
that begins next Oct. 1. It ends “seques-
tration,” the GOP-mandated budget
cuts that slashed billions from both the
military and domestic agencies.
Instead, it saves $63 billion by,
among other methods, requiring future
federal workers contribute $6 billion
more from their paychecks over the
next two years to fund their pensions,
but with no increase in pension pay-
outs. Civilian defense workers would
contribute $6 billion through lower
cost-of-living increases for those ages
40 to 62.
And firms with traditional pension
plans would have to pay $8 billion
more in fees to the federal Pension
Benefit Guaranty Corp (PBGC), the
agency that steps in when a firm goes
bust and gives up its pension plan. Air-
line passengers would pay $12.6 billion
more in ticket taxes, too.
Trumka praised Senate negotiator
Patty Murray (D-Wash.) for success-
fully “resisting Republican demands to
cut Social Security, Medicaid, and
Medicare benefits and food assistance
for people with low incomes.” But he
said the deal “does nothing for the mil-
lions of people who remain without
work and asks nothing from the people
who caused our economic crisis and
continue to benefit from economic in-
equality.” Trumka also slammed the
federal pension provisions, and pre-
dicted the higher PBGC fees would let
firms “justify new rounds of pension
dumping.”
“Meanwhile, at the insistence of”
Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), the House
budget negotiator, “the agreement does
not demand any sacrifice from the
wealthy or from Wall Street,” Trumka
said. “It is hard to justify demanding
further sacrifice from federal employ-
ees and private sector workers while
continuing costly tax preferences for
Wall Street investment managers and
companies that send jobs overseas.”
The pension cuts drew the ire of the
government worker union leaders, who
reiterated their members have already
suffered a three-year pay freeze, lost 16
days of pay due to the GOP-engineered
federal shutdown in October, and were
ordered just last year to send more
money in to pay for pensions.
“AFGE (American Federation of
Government Employees) cannot sup-
port any budget deal that asks for more
from federal employees,” said President
J. David Cox, a retiree from the Veter-
ans Affairs Department. “AFGE rejects
the notion there should be a trade-off
between funding the programs to which
federal employees have devoted their
lives, and their own livelihoods,” Cox
continued. “Though the $6 billion in in-
creased retirement contributions for
new employees is less severe than the
administration’s $20 billion proposal, it
is still unacceptable.”
Cox said newly hired federal work-
ers pay $1 of every $11 from their pay-
checks to fund their pensions and con-
tribute to Social Security, combined. A
1.3 percent hike in the pension contri-
NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
bution, which the budget deal mandates,
would push that figure to 10.6 percent
of newly hired workers’ paychecks.
The National Treasury Employees
Union (NTEU) took a dim view of the
budget deal. “While we were able to
prevent any cuts to current employees
... we continue to believe there should
be zero cuts to federal pay and benefits
in this deal and that federal employees
are being asked to contribute a dispro-
portionate share to deficit reduction,”
NTEU said. The union put the “contri-
bution” from the pay freeze and prior
pension contributions at $114 billion,
not counting furloughs, the 16-day
shutdown or sequestration impacts.
The International Association of
Fire Fighters (IAFF) reiterated those
points and added that “these contribu-
tions” by federal workers to deficit cut-
ting “will not be called upon to pay” an
increased pension benefit. “They’ll be
diverted to other uses.”
We support congressional efforts to
find additional revenue” to help get rid
of the sequester and its impacts, IAFF
added. “But we strongly oppose asking
workers to once again foot the bill.”
Instead, Congress should eliminate
“tax breaks for millionaires and billion-
aires,” the union said.
In a letter to Sen. Murray and Rep.
Ryan, a coalition of unions — includ-
ing the Laborers, AFSCME, the Letter
Carriers, the Mail Handlers/Laborers,
the Machinists, the Postal Workers, the
Air Traffic Controllers, and the Rural
Letter Carriers — said pension cuts are
“simply unacceptable.”
“The proposal would effectively cut
the take-home pay of federal employ-
ees who are already struggling finan-
cially. Some refer to these changes as
‘fees’ on the federal workforce. Make
no mistake about it — this is a tax on
federal employees pure and simple; the
only constituency who would be taxed
under your proposed budget,” the coali-
tion’s letter explained.
“No other group of Americans con-
tributed to deficit reduction the way
federal employees have. It is time for
Congress to do its job and find other
ways to reduce the deficit than continu-
ally taking from our members whose
only sin has been to dedicate their lives
to federal service.”
...ATU at TriMet
(From Page 1)
trying mightily to be neither earlier nor
later than the schedule dictates. And
worse, drivers go for hours without the
ability to easily take bathroom breaks,
and suffer for it. Many chronic condi-
tions are worsened by dehydration.
“If you’re knowingly going to be in
a situation where you won’t be able to
use the rest room for many hours, you
change the way you hydrate yourself,”
Freeman said.
TriMet hasn’t solved the bathroom
breaks issue, but it has taken other
measures: It maintains gyms at multi-
ple garages, offers yoga classes, pro-
vides healthy snacks in vending ma-
chines, and pays for smoking
cessation, weight loss support pro-
grams and chronic condition manage-
ment support programs.
“TriMet has put a considerable
amount of investment into the health
and welfare of their employees and
their employees’ families,” Freeman
told the Labor Press.
But utilization of available health
plan programs is low. Freeman says it
will take union and management work-
ing together to turn that around.
Something will have to change to
transform a culture of stress and mis-
trust.
Novick’s involvement may help, by
bringing the two sides together. At the
Dec. 5 meeting, participants came up
with a menu of approaches to improv-
ing worker health. One approach
would be to employ “hot spotters” —
identifying individuals with chronic
conditions who would benefit from
health coaches and specialized atten-
tion. The Atlantic City, New Jersey,
casino workers union UNITE HERE
Local 54 pioneered that approach,
which came to national attention in a
much-read 2011 article by Atul
Gawande in the Atlantic Monthly. An-
other would be for TriMet to hire nurse
practitioners or other medical profes-
sionals directly and make them avail-
able on site.
“Why are shifts so complicated?”
Freeman asked. “What if replacement
drivers, instead of sitting in the bull pen
in the bus barn, were out in the field,
easily accessible? What if there was
free lunch delivery to every TriMet
driver? What if there was an apple and
an orange in their pouch when they
picked up the keys to get their bus for
their shift?”
On Dec. 12, Novick, Local 757
President Bruce Hansen and TriMet
general manager Neil McFarlane de-
livered a panel presentation about their
work to an audience of several hundred
at a conference organized by Free-
man’s group, at which the headliner
was Oregon governor John Kitzhaber.
Hansen told the Labor Press it was
the first time McFarlane had been per-
sonally involved in the effort. But it’s a
start.
The next step will be for the stake-
holders — labor and management —
to pick one of those ideas and get to
work. Once they do so, likely in Janu-
ary, Freeman said she would seek grant
funding to implement it.
“I feel like the union has an amaz-
ing opportunity here to drive a culture
of health,” Freeman said. “It would be
great if the cost of health care within
TriMet got to a point where employees
could start to see raises — instead of
costs related to health care.”
PAGE 21