NPR: Federal Workers, Burdened By Shutdown, Face Trump-Ordered Pay Freeze

[TomCADem]

It is lost in the hustle and bustle of the Trump manufactured shutdown, but Trump has also halted increases in Federal worker pay for fiscal considerations even as he has touted the jolt to the economy that would be result from his tax cuts.

https://www.npr.org/2019/01/01/681361905/federal-workers-burdened-by-shutdown-face-trump-ordered-pay-freeze

President Trump on Friday issued an executive order freezing the salary rates for federal workers. The order wasn't a surprise but for some 800,000 federal employees furloughed during the partial government shutdown or working without pay, it was like rubbing salt into a wound.

The president had been telegraphing his plans for a pay freeze for almost a year — first in his annual budget and again last summer in a letter to Congress. Trump pointed to the government's dire fiscal situation. Thanks to tax cuts and increased spending, the deficit has ballooned to more than a trillion dollars this year.

Trump's order only applies to civilian workers. Military personnel, who are covered under a separate funding measure, will receive a 2.6 percent raise.

Jacqueline Simon of the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal workers union, tells NPR that "the military deserve their pay increase, and we're strongly in favor of it. And, in fact, for many, many years — decades, even — there was parity between the civilian and the military workforces in terms of their pay adjustments."

[wishstar]

1. This amounts to a pay decrease since their health insurance premiums are going up

Most Feds have a substantial Blue Cross or other health insurance premium taken from their pay amounting to hundreds of dollars a month if they are on a couple or family plan and those plans are going up for 2019.

I expect with Mick Mulvaney in WH, we can expect even more cold hearted executive orders targeting people and programs that WH thinks are not popular with the base. The Trump budget last year called for slashing cost of living increases only for Federal retirees' pensions while everyone else on Social Security, SSI, Railroad, VA, and military would get full COLA's even though Fed retirees have increasingly hefty health insurance premiums deducted from their pensions. This unfair proposal did not happen.