Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s comment about “unfair” federal pay and benefits has raised the hackles of the two largest federal unions. The National Treasury Employees Union slammed Romney yesterday for going after middle-class federal workers. And today, American Federation of Government Employees President John Gage let loose with an even more cutting response: You know what’s really unfair? The specter of having a new boss who thinks so little about the work that you do that he can’t bother getting his facts straight before making the ridiculous and patently false claim that federal workers are “getting better pay and…
Browsing: John Gage
John Gage, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, is worried that the proposed two-year federal pay freeze is just the beginning of the bad news for federal employees. In a video AFGE just posted, Gage said he will meet with the administration later this week, and “I’m expecting the other shoe to drop with something about our pensions coming up.” Gage also uses the video to attack everything about the pay freeze, from the figures used to derive the expected savings, to Obama’s negotiating strategy, the assumption that federal employees should bear some of the recession’s burden,…
Here’s a few new details on the Defense Authorization Bill’s repeal of the National Security Personnel System that lawmakers on a House-Senate conference committee have agreed upon: All 205,000 employees currently under NSPS will be transferred back to their original pay system by Jan. 1, 2012, according to a statement from Rep. Edolphus Towns, D-N.Y. The bulk of NSPS employees were originally under the General Schedule system. American Federation of Government Employees President John Gage — who in June compared NSPS to Dracula — thinks the Defense Authorization Bill will be the final stake in the heart of the program. But…
The American Federation of Government Employees yesterday re-elected John Gage to a third three-year term as national president. “There is much to do on behalf of federal workers,” Gage told delegates to AFGE’s national convention in Reno after he was sworn in Aug. 27. “Our focus is now on the midterm congressional elections and making sure the American people have the public services they deserve. We plan to help elect a Congress with men and women who are actually responsive to the needs of the American people, particularly the nation’s working families.” Delegates also re-elected J. David Cox as national…
 Update: AFGE has also sent yours truly this point-by-point refutation of industry’s opposition to the CLEAN UP Act. We told you earlier today about a Republican bill introduced yesterday to promote the outsourcing of commercial work performed by federal employees. Now enter the American Federation of Government Employees, a privatization foe, announcing it has taken “its contracting out reform campaign to the House of Representatives.” In a June 4 news release, union boss John Gage applauded the introduction of Mikulski’s CLEAN UP Act in the House by Rep. John Sarbanes, D-Md. Gage said: The CLEAN UP Act is vital to any serious effort to…