{"id":10363,"date":"2015-03-18T14:39:50","date_gmt":"2015-03-18T19:39:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/?p=10363"},"modified":"2015-03-18T14:39:50","modified_gmt":"2015-03-18T19:39:50","slug":"nalc-house-budget-plan-cut-letter-carrier-pay-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/2015\/03\/18\/nalc-house-budget-plan-cut-letter-carrier-pay-again\/","title":{"rendered":"NALC: House budget \u2018plan\u2019? Cut letter carrier pay (again)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">NALC News &#8211; Mar 18, 2015<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"text\">\n<figure class=\"photo\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.nalc.org\/government-affairs\/legislative-updates\/image\/budget_house_gov.png\" alt=\"House budget \u2018plan\u2019? Cut letter carrier pay (again)\" \/><\/figure>\n<p>The federal spending plan for Fiscal Year 2016 released by the House of Representatives on Tuesday once again aims to cut letter carriers\u2019 pay.<\/p>\n<p>The FY2016 budget measure, released by the House Budget Committee, calls for requiring all federal employees to pay more out of their own pockets toward their retirement benefits.<\/p>\n<p>While the House bill doesn\u2019t say exactly how much of a pay cut its authors are looking for, it does refer to the recommendations of President Barack Obama&#8217;s 2010 National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, which concluded that the government and its employees should share equally in paying for pension benefits. The commission is more commonly known as the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/National_Commission_on_Fiscal_Responsibility_and_Reform\" target=\"_blank\">Simpson-Bowles Commission<\/a>, named after its appointed chairmen: former Sen. Alan Simpson (R-WY) and Erskine Bowles, a former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe Simpson-Bowles plan calls for all federal worker contributions\u2014under both <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nalc.org\/workplace-issues\/retirement\/body\/q-n-a-csrs-2014.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">CSRS<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nalc.org\/workplace-issues\/retirement\/body\/q-n-a-fers-2014.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">FERS<\/a>\u00a0\u2014to go up to 6 percent,\u201d NALC President Fredric Rolando said. \u201cIn other words, they want 6 percent of your pay to go toward your pensions, with no accompanying increase in your pension benefits.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Under this plan, for example, a top step letter carrier (Step O) would see an annual reduction in pay of more than $3,500.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe Postal Service doesn\u2019t take a dime of taxpayer money,\u201d Rolando said. \u201cSo including letter carriers and all postal workers in this wholly unfair plan, especially under the guise of \u2018deficit reduction,\u2019 makes no sense at all.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOver the last several years, federal workers\u2019 compensation has seen cuts amounting to $159 billion,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd postal pension accounts are almost fully funded right now, paid for through the sale of postage and postal products, not by the taxes that fund the compensation of the rest of the federal workforce.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s time for all of us to tell Congress that enough is enough,\u201d Rolando said.<\/p>\n<p>The House plan is the first step in what will be a months-long budget process; Fiscal Year 2016 doesn\u2019t start until Oct. 1.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, the Senate version is expected to be released today.<\/p>\n<p>Click here to read more in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/blogs\/federal-eye\/wp\/2015\/03\/17\/house-budget-plan-would-require-higher-federal-employee-retirement-contributions\/\" target=\"_blank\"><em>The Washington Post<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NALC News &#8211; Mar 18, 2015 The federal spending plan for Fiscal Year 2016 released by the House of Representatives on Tuesday once again aims to cut letter carriers\u2019 pay. The FY2016 budget measure, released by the House Budget Committee, calls for requiring all federal employees to pay more out of their own pockets toward [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10364,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nalc-news","last_archivepost"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10363"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10363\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10365,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10363\/revisions\/10365"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}