A publication of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association
Issue link: http://natca.uberflip.com/i/982835
These courses are now available for sign up on the NATCA Membership Portal (except for LEAP, which is by invitation only). Once you have logged in, select "NATCA Academy" from the quick links. Then, select "2018 courses." If you need any help with registration, contact the Coordinator for your region. Registrants will be notified within 35 days from the course start date of their status for the course. If you have any questions, please contact NATCA's Training Coordinator, Carolyn Kamara, at ckamara@natcadc.org . GOVERNMENT AFFAIRS DEPARTMENT CONGRESSIONAL SCHEDULE The House and Senate are in session for the week of May 14. OPM LETTER ON SSA ANNUITY On May 4, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) sent a letter to Speaker of the House Paul Ryan with a legislative proposal from the Administration that greatly affects federal employees' retirement, including air traffic controller retirement. It pro poses to: (1) E liminate the Social Security annuity supplement; (2) I ncrease federal employee FERS retirement contributions 1 percent per year until the contributions reach 7.25 percent; (3) R educe CSRS cost - of - living adjustments (COLAs) by 0.5 percen t each year and eliminate COLAs for FERS for all current and future retirees; and (4) M odify the CSRS and FERS annuity calculations to be based upon a high - 5 years rather than the current high - 3 years. What does this mean? This letter comes from the OPM and represents the Administration's desire to cut retirement benefits for federal employees. It includes proposed legislative language for Congressional consideration. That means that Congress still needs to act on and enact the proposals contained in the letter. What's the background? The proposals included in the letter have been included in President Trump's budget proposals. As you know, we are currently in an environment where anti - federal employee proposals like this are likely. When the current President took office, we knew these sorts of proposals were going to become common. Attacks on federal employees, specifically the elimination of the annuity supplement, have been present in not just the President's budget proposals, but also House Republicans Fiscal Year (FY) 2018 budget p roposal. As a reminder, when elimination of the annuity supplement was proposed in the House FY 18 budget, NATCA fought against inclusion of the proposal and, in the end, the proposal was not included in the final congressional budget resolution.