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Federal employees simply can not take a break.
In the middle of a partial federal closure, President Donald Trump ordered a freeze on federal employee salaries late Friday, blocking the entry into force of an automatic pay raise . January 1st.
Trump said a few months ago that he was in search of freeze . This was finally made possible by the Congress, which never adopted salary increases before the end of the year. The GOP-controlled Senate approved a bipartite increase of 1.9 percent, but the GOP-controlled chamber left it unanswered.
If Trump had done nothing, the federal pay formula would have imposed an automatic wage increase of 2.1%. But the inaction of Congress left him the opportunity to make the zero increase by executive order.
It is likely that the House will accept a pay raise after the Democrats take a majority by a majority on January 3rd. any increase must have a retroactive effect at the beginning of the year if an increase is adopted.
Groups representing federal employees said the Trump freeze was an extra insult to closure. About a quarter of the federal government is not funded yet, with the president claiming $ 5 billion in federal funding for the construction of a wall along the southern border that he had l & # 39; 39, used to pay for Mexico.
Approximately 420,000 federal employees. work without pay and another 380,000 are on leave and are temporarily unemployed. Although legislators have generally approved the retroactive payment retroactively after previous judgments, there is no guarantee that divided Congress would do so this time. a sign of Trump's "disdain" for government employees.
"Refusing to grant a nominal increase to hard-working federal employees of our country as part of a partial government shutdown shows a flagrant disregard for those who hold public office Ken Thomas, chairman of the group, said in a statement
Tony Reardon, president of the National Union of Treasury Employees, which represents 150,000 federal employees, said Trump "was paying salt in the wound ", while the workers are without pay.
As reported by HuffPost on Thursday, this partial stop is just the last chapter of Trump's long battle with the officials doing the work of the government. In addition to the wage freeze, his administration also attempted to withdraw collective bargaining rights and increase workers' pension contributions.
Many workers and their representatives bristle the middle class government employees who are grouped with the "swamp" that Trump said he had to drain.
"It's almost as if we had a war administration with its own workforce," said a union official at HuffPost earlier this week. "It's a permanent aggression."
Trump warned that the judgment could be extended " for a very long time " if he does not get the wall money he wants. The Democrats have announced that they will introduce a bill reopening the government as soon as they arrive in the Chamber of Deputies next week, but until now they have shown that few signs of corruption will be forthcoming. acquiescence to the requests of the president.
The military is not subject to the law. pay the freeze. They will receive a 2.6% increase in their salary next year, even if Trump falsely told them that they would receive 10%.
HuffPost readers: Are you affected by the closure? Tell us about this. Please include a phone number if you wish to have an interview.
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