Federal employees trying to protect their turf, hey they are only human

This from the government employee website

A coalition of 15 federal unions, management groups and other employee groups is pushing back against proposals to cut federal pay, benefits and staffing levels as part of a deficit reduction plan.

Hey we are all human, we want to protect what we have earned and we pick and choose the right facts to make our case.  However, sometimes this is on a grand scale and related to issues that affect more than the individuals directly involved.   Take a look at this letter.  Pay particular attention to the section I highlighted in bold.  They are right you know, very few private sector employers require employee contributions to defined benefit plans.  Of course, the point left out is that very few and a declining number of private sector workers have a defined benefit pension which has been replaced with defined contribution plans requiring workers to fund 75% to 100% of their retirement income with no guarantees on the actual benefit. 

And here is more convoluted logic from the letter. There is no reason to make changes because the pensions are fully funded and financially sound.  Okay, but how much money does it take to keep them that way?  The point is not the current status of the fund, but the generosity of the plan that dictates the amount of funding required in the future.

This is from the government employees website: 

In a Jan. 13 letter to President Obama and Office of Management and Budget Director Jack Lew, the Federal-Postal Coalition said that recommendations from the White House’s bipartisan deficit reduction commission are based on bad assumptions and will harm the federal work force. The letter urges Obama and Lew not to include the recommendations in the fiscal 2012 budget proposal that will be released next month.

Freezing pay — the commission proposed a three-year freeze, one year longer than the 2011-2012 freeze Obama ordered — will hurt the government’s ability to recruit and retain talented workers, the letter said. And the proposal to cut the work force by 10 percent “is more about politics than good human resource management,” the coalition said.

“In light of the growing number of critical challenges being tasked to federal workers, the government cannot afford to make substantial reductions to the earned compensation of individuals who have dedicated their careers to public service,” the letter said. “We ask that you defend the integrity of a system that provides wages, health and retirement benefits compensation to 4.6 million federal workers and annuitants.”

The coalition opposes the deficit reduction commission’s recommendation to increase the amount federal employees pay into their retirement systems, and to start calculating annuities based on the average of employees’ five highest salaries instead of the three highest. The commission in December said feds should contribute half the cost of their pensions instead of 1/14 of the cost.

But the coalition said that would result in a significant pay cut, and said most medium and large private-sector employers have not required workers to make any contributions toward defined benefit pensions. The letter also cited a Congressional Research Service report that said over 75 years, the securities in the retirement and disability fund will grow to 18 times the amount needed to pay annual benefits.

“There is no public policy basis to accept the proposed reductions to federal civilian retirement since the Civil Service Retirement and Disability Fund is fully funded and financially sound,” the letter said.