During the last four years in office, President Donald Trump has catered to wealthy Americans and big corporations with tax cuts and deregulation while harming working class citizens.
His latest move continues to harm workers as he backs the Senate Republican’s attempt to halt the pay of civilian federal employees in 2021.
“In a letter earlier this week to Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Trump’s budget director said that the White House ‘supports the policy in the bill to maintain for 2021 the current level of federal civilian employee pay,’ pointing to ‘budgetary constraints and recent, pandemic-related impacts on non-federal labor markets,’” reports Jake Johnson from Common Dreams.
The Senate GOP’s have received a lot of backlash and pushback from Democratic lawmakers and union leaders who call the proposal a “cruel slap in the face” amid a pandemic. But this does not stop Trump from backing the proposal.
“In a year when federal employees have stepped up to respond to a global pandemic, with tens of thousands on the frontlines working on behalf of the American people and contracting Covid-19 in the process, a 1% pay increase was the least our nation could do to honor the commitment of feds,” says Ken Thomas, national president of the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association. “But now, the White House has come out in support of a proposal… which would freeze federal pay at 2020 levels, while at the same time, the administration affirmed its support for a 3% pay increase for military members. This disparity devalues the contributions of civil servants, who tirelessly and expertly meet the needs of not only our military, but also of our nation as it struggles through this historic crisis and attendant rocky economic conditions.”
According to Common Dreams, the push for a pay freeze comes on top of Trump’s effort to gut civil service protections via executive order, a move that has been condemned as an all-out war on the federal workforce.
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