Last Friday, the Director of the Office of Personnel Management
sent a letter to Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Paul Ryan with the Administration's legislative proposal to cut federal employees' retirement benefits, including those of Air Traffic Controllers. The Administration proposes to: (1) eliminate the annuity supplement (Social Security annuity supplement); (2) increase FERS retirement contributions 1% per year until the contributions reach 7.25% of each employee's pay; (3) reduce CSRS cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs) by 0.5% each year and eliminate COLAs for FERS for all current and future retirees; and (4) modify the CSRS and FERS annuity calculations to be based upon a high-5 years rather than the current high-3 years.
NATCA already has begun vigorously opposing these attacks on federal employee wages and benefits, as we have done in the past when similar proposals were included in the President's 2019 fiscal year budget proposal.
We expect that you will see media coverage about these proposals and related issues. We wanted to make you aware of the situation as soon as possible and let you know that we are already working to oppose the proposals, as well as integrating our response into our NATCA in Washington event, which runs May 20 - May 23.
As we learn more about these proposals and their legislative path in Congress, we will update you with those details. We also will call on you to engage on these issues if any of these proposals begin to move forward in Congress.
