NFFE National President Randy Erwin met virtually today with U.S. House and Senate Leadership to discuss the issues and legislative goals facing the federal workforce during the 117th Congress. The meeting was hosted by House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) and attended by Senators Cardin, Van Hollen, Warner, and U.S. Representatives Beyer, Connolly, Raskin, Ruppersberger, Sarbanes, Scott, Spanberger, Trone, and Wexton.
Discussions revolved around continuing to provide assistance to federal workers and their families during the COVID pandemic, repairing the damage that was done to workforce policies and practices under the last administration, and filling gaps in the law that allowed for the political coercion of career employees over the last four years.
“We’ve uncovered how vulnerable the federal workforce is to political bullying when civil service laws fail to protect merit system principles and the right to union representation,” stated NFFE National President Randy Erwin, in a request to strengthen existing laws to protect all workers and examine limitations on presidential authority to violate law via executive order.
President Erwin continued to address the issues important to NFFE members including pay parity and pay caps, rolling back FERS employee contributions, protecting the FERS annuity supplement, creating a government-wide family leave benefit, continuing the A-76 mortarium, returning probation to one year, blocking BRAC attempts, fixing flawed RIF procedures, passing the VA Employee Fairness Act, passing the First Responder Fair RETIRE Act and other firefighter legislation, passing the Law Enforcement Officers Equity Act, and providing full autonomy and funding for OPM.
“We have a real window of opportunity this Congress to make meaningful changes,” Erwin continued. “On behalf of 110,000 NFFE members, I want to thank everyone on this call for their dedication and commitment to helping federal workers. We learned a lot of hard lessons over the past four years. This is our chance to repair what was broken and move forward stronger than ever.”