If the Trump administration makes good on the rumor that it will give federal employees a 1.9 percent raise in 2018, don’t expect much praise from federal employee unions.
The Washington Post reported on March 20 that Trump would propose the 1.9 percent raise for employees as part of a budget that includes deep spending cuts for agencies, in addition to an executive order that calls for the reorganization of the executive branch.
With the possibility of layoffs looming, federal employee unions were not impressed with the raise rumor.
“While it’s good that the White House recognizes the need to raise wages for federal employees, the 1.9 percent pay raise being proposed by the Trump administration is far below what’s called for under the law, said American Federation of Government Employees National President J. David Cox in a statement.
“Federal employees earn less today than they did at the start of the decade when adjusted for inflation, and they deserve a more meaningful increase to make up for the more than $182 billion in cuts to their pay and benefits that have occurred since 2010.”
Trump’s proposed raise with be the second-highest since 2014 — following behind former President Obama’s 2.1 percent mark for 2017 — but the unions noted that the pay bumps have fallen far behind the rate of inflation.
“The federal workforce needs a fair raise so employees can begin to make up for years of nearly stagnant wages,” said National Treasury Employees Union President Tony Reardon in a statement. “Federal employees provide important services to this country and we need to stop devaluing them through wages that are too low.”
Reardon said that the private sector wage growth is nearly double that of public sector jobs over the past five years, citing data from the Department of Labor’s Employment Cost Index showing private sector salaries increasing 10.4 percent compared to 5.4 percent.
“Federal employees are facing the same financial challenges as any middle-class worker and their salaries need to keep up with rising costs of health care, tuition and mortgages,” he said.
A year ago, Obama’s budget noted that federal employee pay increases had fallen behind the ECI — which measures the cost of labor — for eight consecutive years, calling it “the largest relative pay cut over an eight-year period since the passage of [Federal Employees Pay Comparability Act of 1990] by a significant margin.”
Obama had proposed a 1.6 percent pay raise in that budget, but later used an alternative pay base outlined in Title 5 statutes for “national emergency or serious economic conditions affecting the general welfare,” to increase the raise to 2.1 percent on Dec. 8.
Rep. Gerald Connolly, D-Va., has actively sponsored legislation to increase federal salaries with his Federal Adjustment of Income Rates Act. The measure, which calls for a 3.2 percent raise in 2018, has the backing of both AFGE and NTEU and a companion bill in the Senate, but hasn’t made it out of committee yet.
