June 4, 2025
Since the start of the calendar year, the National Federation of Federal Employees (NFFE-IAM) legislative team has been working with Congress to develop and implement strategies to defend the civil service from both ongoing attacks and future threats.
We are meeting daily with Senate and House office staff, while also participating in ongoing in-person briefings with key lawmakers who are supporters of labor and federal employees. NFFE Executive Director Steve Lenkart recently briefed members of Congress at a Federal Employees Working Group event (pictured), in which he laid out the dire consequences of the Trump Administration’s plans to implement an expansive version of Schedule F, now titled Schedule Policy/Career. The meetings also covered litigation updates, collective bargaining attacks, budget reconciliation, RIFS, probationary firings, and more.
With the help of the NFFE members, our partners in federal labor, and the AFL-CIO, we have secured a majority of House members as cosponsors of the Protect America’s Workforce Act (H.R. 2550), a bipartisan bill which would invalidate President Trump’s March 27 executive order eliminating collective bargaining rights and union representation for more than one million federal workers. We are pressuring Congress to bring this bill to the House floor for a vote soon and working with the Senate to introduce its version of the legislation.
The House of Representatives passed a budget reconciliation package on May 22, with several provisions targeting federal workers, their retirement, and civil service merit protections. However, NFFE defeated two significant threats, including an attempt to require all federal workers to pay 4.4% of their earnings into FERS, as well as a provision that would have required pensions to be calculated from the five highest-paid years instead of the current high three.
NFFE is now lobbying the Senate to reject those same items and the harmful provisions of the House bill in its budget reconciliation package. Among those threats are:
- Extorting New Hires into Political Servitude: Offering new federal employees a lower FERS contribution rate—but only if they agree to be hired under Schedule P/C
- Cutting First Responders’ Pensions: Eliminating the FERS Annuity Supplement would punish law enforcement officers, wildland firefighters, and other first responders who retire—or are forced to retire—before they qualify for Social Security.
- Unlawful Fees on Justice and Unions: Imposing a $350 fee on federal employees to file appeals with the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), and charging unions for official time—despite it being legally mandated
It is critical that you use our Action Network to contact your Senators: Tell Congress Hands Off Federal Employees’ Retirement and Merit Protections. You can also call using the Congressional switchboard: (202) 224-3121.