President Obama’s decision to freeze the pay of federal workers over the next two years will impact about 6,100 civilian employees in the Columbus metro area.
The pay freeze, announced Monday by the White House, is aimed at tackling the ballooning federal budget deficit, Obama said. It would impact 2 million federal employees worldwide -- but not U.S. troops -- and is expected to save $2 billion for the remainder of fiscal year 2011, $28 billion over five years and more than $60 billion over the next decade.
“The hard truth is that getting this deficit under control is going to require some broad sacrifice, and that sacrifice must be shared by the employees of the federal government,” Obama said.
The proposed pay freeze was met Monday by a combination of outrage and fear among organizations that lobby on behalf of the nation’s civilian federal workers.
“If we don’t get an increase and everything else keeps going up, it’s going to eventually be where we’re not going to be able to make it at all. So it is scary when you think about it,” said Inez Steed, a resident of West Point, Ga., and president of the LaGrange chapter of the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association.
Steed, who retired in 1996 after a 25-year stint in civil service at Fort Benning and Fort McPherson in Atlanta, said there is major concern the U.S. government will eventually attempt to cut retirement plans and other benefits.
“That is a fear, yes, we’re all worried about that. I just hope they don’t go too far,” said Steed, whose federal pension and Social Security benefits already have been frozen two years.
The American Federation of Government Employees union chief at Fort Benning, who represents about 2,500 federal civilians, declined to comment on the pay freeze.
But the national president, in a conference call with reporters Monday, came out swinging, expressing disappointment in Obama’s plan, calling it “superficial” and “wrong-headed.”
“The problem we have is a jobs problem. It’s an income problem, a revenue problem, two wars that haven’t been financed, then the stock market blows up,” said AFGE President John Gage. “And yet the best that the Obama administration can do is freeze federal pay. I just saw Goldman Sachs announcing that a thousand of their employees are going to get a $1 million bonus this year. I’m just so disappointed that this approach is being taken.”
In October, the U.S. Department of Labor reported there were about 100,000 federal workers in Georgia. There are 6,100 in the Columbus metro area, about half of those at Fort Benning, although the metro area includes Muscogee, Chattahoochee, Harris and Marion counties in Georgia and Russell County in Alabama.
Fort Benning is in the process of expanding its civilian work force because of the movement of the U.S. Armor School and Center from Fort Knox, Ky. Post officials have said they expect the civilian number to swell past 4,500 next year.
Defending the workers
Aside from the budget-busting recession, complicating matters for civilian federal workers is the perception they are overpaid. A Washington Post survey released last month found that 52 percent of Americans believe that to be the case.
Gage, AFGE’s president, addressed the seeming lack of empathy for the federal work force.
“It’s really up, I think, to our union to get it across to the American public that the government is not a bunch of faceless bureaucrats who do nothing,” he said, pointing out they are Veterans Affairs nurses and border patrol agents and Social Security workers.
“I’m just tired of having federal employees scapegoated, especially for reasons that are totally false and totally wrong,” Gage said.
The union president noted that while workers’ pay may be frozen, routine step increases in salaries and those from promotions are safe for now.
