Norton Receives Legislative Leadership Award, Today
WASHINGTON, DC – Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), a senior member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on Federal Workforce, will receive the Legislative Leadership Award from the D.C. Federation of the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association today, Tuesday, October 7, 2014, at 1:00 p.m. D.C. Federation President, Linwood Watson, will come to Norton's office to present the award to Norton in recognition of her many accomplishments as a champion of federal employees and retirees.
Just last month, the Senior Executive Service Accountability Act, H.R. 5169, which passed the House by voice vote, included Norton's amendment to strengthen due process rights for federal workers.
It is a special honor to receive an award from an organization dedicated to protecting the pay, retirement, and benefits of federal employees at a time when they have been under siege in the House of Representatives," Norton said. "Federal employees and retirees have faced the worst period in decades with three years of pay freezes, sequester furloughs and a government shutdown all at once. When such unfairness is piled on our dedicated federal workers and retirees, it is not difficult to stand up for them. I will continue to fight for the rights of federal employees and retirees."
Norton has introduced a series of bills to bring increased stability and fairness to federal employees. Last year, Norton introduced a bill to overturn an unprecedented federal court decision that strips federal employees of their due process right to independent review of agency decisions removing them from nonsecurity jobs unilaterally designated by agencies as sensitive. The bill would overturn a U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit decision, Kaplan v. Conyers and MSPB that prevents workers who are designated as "noncritical sensitive" from appealing to the Merit Systems Protection Board if they are removed from their job. Norton is also a cosponsor of a bill that will give a 3.3% pay raise to federal employees by 2015 and a bill that will restore the cuts to federal employees' retirement benefits. She introduced a resolution during the first week of the sequester that commended federal employees for their work and the contributions that they provide to the federal government. Outraged that Member pay was excluded from sequestration, she introduced a bill to subject Member pay to any future sequestration and donated a portion of her pay during the shutdown to the Federal Employee Education and Assistance Fund in solidarity with federal workers.