{"id":10448,"date":"2015-03-26T07:43:23","date_gmt":"2015-03-26T12:43:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/?p=10448"},"modified":"2015-03-26T07:43:23","modified_gmt":"2015-03-26T12:43:23","slug":"apwu-budget-bills-cut-postal-federal-pay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/2015\/03\/26\/apwu-budget-bills-cut-postal-federal-pay\/","title":{"rendered":"APWU: Budget Bills: Cut Postal, Federal Pay"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"news-date-inline\"><span class=\"date-display-single\">03\/25\/2015<\/span><span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span>&#8211;<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/span>Two congressional committees are proposing to solve the nation\u2019s financial problems in part by reducing pay for millions of postal and federal employees.<\/p>\n<p>Budget bills for fiscal year 2016 proposed by House and Senate committees last week would cut pay for postal and federal workers by increasing the amount employees must pay into retirement accounts \u2013 without any increase in benefits.<\/p>\n<p>Under the budget bills, up to 6 percent of a postal worker\u2019s wages would go toward funding retirement programs \u2013 reducing pay by thousands of dollars each year. In recent years, Congress increased the contributions required from employees covered by FERS (Federal Employees Retirement System) from 0.8 percent to 4.4 percent.<\/p>\n<p>Over the past five years, lawmakers have already cut federal and postal workers pay and benefits by $159 billion \u2013 and now they want more.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere is no justification for these pay cuts,\u201d said APWU President Mark Dimondstein. \u201cThe Postal Service is \u2018off budget\u2019 and doesn\u2019t get a dime of taxpayer money,\u201d he pointed out, \u201cand postal pension accounts are almost fully funded.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf Congress was serious about reducing the deficit, they would eliminate the tax breaks for the Wall Street crowd instead of coming after workers,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n<p>Legislative and Political Director John Marcotte also condemned the proposals. \u201cThis is a blatant pay cut for postal workers,\u201d he said. \u201cCongress can\u2019t continue to balance the federal budget on employees\u2019 backs.<\/p>\n<p class=\"last\">\u00a0\u201cWe will vigorously fight these bills,\u201d Marcotte said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"last\"><a href=\"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/1-APWU-New.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-10087\" src=\"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/1-APWU-New-300x157.jpg\" alt=\"1-APWU-New\" width=\"300\" height=\"157\" srcset=\"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/1-APWU-New-300x157.jpg 300w, https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/1-APWU-New.jpg 478w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>03\/25\/2015\u00a0&#8211;\u00a0Two congressional committees are proposing to solve the nation\u2019s financial problems in part by reducing pay for millions of postal and federal employees. Budget bills for fiscal year 2016 proposed by House and Senate committees last week would cut pay for postal and federal workers by increasing the amount employees must pay into retirement accounts [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10087,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-apwu-news","last_archivepost"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10448","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=10448"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10448\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10449,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10448\/revisions\/10449"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10087"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}