The National Association of Postal Supervisors (NAPS), along with its partners in the Federal-Postal Coalition, strongly oppose any reduction in retirement benefits or increase in employee contributions, as part of a budget deal reached by Congressional negotiators.

NAPS joined thirty other federal and postal employee and retiree groups in co-signing the December 9 letter to the leaders of the budget conference committee, opposing cuts in federal retirement benefits. Referencing media reports signaling the willingness of budget negotiators to offset sequestration by reducing federal retirement pension benefits, the Federal-Postal Coalition letter said, “[W]e are dismayed to learn that increasing the pension contributions and/or changing the retirement formula for current federal employees is on the table in the budget conference discussions designed to finance a two-year lifting of sequestration.”While sequestration, the automatic process of budget cuts set in motion by the 2011 budget law, does not reach to the Postal Service, postal employees would be hurt by any budget deal that cut federal retirement pension benefits. Already, federal and postal employees over the past three years have sacrificed $113 billion in pay freezes and pension cutbacks toward deficit reduction. Some of the proposals discussed by the budget conference reportedly have involved increasing how much employees contribute toward their retirement benefits, as well as changing the high-three formula. These changes would only add another level of hardship to federal and postal employees who, in many cases, are already struggling to make ends meet.

NAPS will continue to work with its partners in the federal and postal workforce community and on Capitol Hill to advance a balanced approach toward deficit reduction. We need to assure that Congress stops going to the federal government’s favorite ATM – the federal workforce – for dollars to pay national priorities. It’s time to stop these unfair and counterproductive attacks on the federal workforce and its compensation systems designed to attract and retain the best employees to work for the Postal Service and Uncle Sam.