Federal employees deserve better
To the editor:
I am a 26-plus year federal employee working as a U.S. Customs and Border Protection Officer and am president of NTEU Chapter 141 representing some 400 CBP officers, agriculture specialists, and non-uniformed employees in Maine, New Hampshire and Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. The people I work with and represent on a daily basis are as dedicated a group as you will find in any sector — public or private. We are proud of what we do to protect our national security, our country from terrorists, our nation’s trade and commerce, our food and water supplies, illegal drugs and aliens from getting into our country, and not only our communities, but those of every single American we protect 24/7.
While you soundly sleep at night, while you enjoy weekends and holidays off with your family, while you cheer at your son’s soccer game or daughter’s recital, we are working rotating shifts 24/7 that inhibit our ability to enjoy those moments with our families. In our jobs, there is no room for error. We can’t afford to miss a beat. We must get it right every time or more like the 9/11 attackers will be here again. We are committed to public service and that is why the ongoing attacks on federal workers are so disappointing to and unjustly disparaging of my coworkers and me.
It seems that every day a candidate for federal office or a sitting member of Congress looking to get re-elected or add some “pork” to a Bill calls for cutting the federal workforce, slashing agency budgets, eliminating entire departments, or making even deeper cuts in federal employees’ pay or pensions. These constant negative attacks affect not only federal employees, but the public we serve.
As the government’s employees, federal workers are an easy and all-too-convenient target for politicians! No other group has been singled out for the pay freezes and pension cuts we’ve had heaped upon us! We’ve already contributed $60 billion over the next 10 years to deficit reduction through a two-year pay freeze and another $15 billion in retirement program changes. Yet no other entity within the public or private sector has put up a single dime! Oil companies with record profits are still getting their tax breaks and subsidies! Millionaires and billionaires still pay less in total taxes than the average working family. And yet federal employees continue to be singled out for more cuts, contributions, and benefit losses.
Federal employees serve the public diligently every day. When called upon, we have always been willing to do our share, and more! When no one else is shouldering the burden, we are justified in standing loud and strong to say that we do not deserve to have certain in Congress and those who would be president continue to look to cuts in our pensions as a way to finance debt reduction or rebuild roads or bridges, or finance the pork!
A number of bills pending in Congress would change our retirement formula giving us less money after a 20-, 25-, or 30-year career with the government. We came to work for the government under a set of rules that very clearly set forth what our pay, benefits, and retirement entitlements would be. For Congress to this late in the careers of the hundreds of us nearing retirement change the rules of the game and break the contract their predecessors made with federal employees of our age and service is nothing less than a broken promise to every federal employee who believed that public service was a worthy calling. It discourages those I represent nearing retirement age. It will inhibit the youngest, brightest folks we so desperately need in these jobs from applying, and it saddens me to know that we will lose talented scientists, doctors, lawyers and others from further or future government employment because they cannot trust Congress to keep its word.
This CBP Officer and those several hundred I represent are also extremely concerned at the danger this presents to our national security! This is a legacy our country cannot afford and must speak out upon to our members of and candidates for Congress and those who would be president.
Alan D. Mulherin
NTEU Chapter 141 – CBP
Limestone
