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Norton Set to Fight Trump’s Cancellation of Modest Pay Increase for Nation’s Federal Civil Servants

August 31, 2018

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), a senior member of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which has jurisdiction over federal employees, today released the following statement after President Trump canceled a 2.1 percent pay raise for civilian federal employees scheduled to take effect January 2019.

"President Trump's disdain for the hardworking men and women in our federal workforce apparently knows no bounds as he now tries to nix a modest pay increase for our nation's civil servants. It is particularly shameful for the President to cite deficit reduction as a reason after taking credit for the $1.5 trillion giveaway to corporations and the wealthiest one percent.

"Federal employees, unlike private employees, cannot collectively bargain for wages and must depend on the fairness of Congress. This Administration has already illegally sought to unilaterally bar federal workers from collectively bargaining for their conditions of work, a usurpation that a federal court quickly blocked. I am a cosponsor of a bill for the first significant federal employee pay raise in years. However, with Republicans in control of both the House and Senate, it is up to Congress, which has the power of the purse, to authorize at lease this small pay increase in the spending bill that is on the table.

"On behalf of the thousands of federal workers who live in the District of Columbia and the millions more across the nation, I will not accept anything less than this pay increase, which still has a chance in the final appropriations bill to fund the federal government. We can accept no less for our already beleaguered federal workforce, or we will not be able to recruit the best and the brightest our nation deserves."