Trump signs executive order to freeze pay raise for federal workers in 2019

U.S. President Donald Trump has made good on a promise made earlier in the year and has frozen pay increases for federal workers, even as hundreds of thousands are left without paycheques due to a government shutdown.

Trump signed an executive order Friday freezing pay for federal civilian workers in 2019. He had earlier said he would do so in August in a letter to Congress, saying the raise was “inappropriate.”

“We must maintain efforts to put our nation on a fiscally sustainable course, and federal agency budgets cannot sustain such increases,” Trump said in August. “I view the increases that would otherwise take effect as inappropriate.”

The order affects roughly two million civilian workers who would otherwise have received a 2.1-per-cent increase in January. It also cancels an initiative that would have raised rates based on where the worker worked, which was scheduled to take effect in January.

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The news comes as about 380,000 federal employees are on furlough and 420,000 are working without pay.

“This is just pouring salt into the wound,” Tony Reardon, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, said in a statement. “It is shocking that federal employees are taking yet another financial hit.”

The National Treasury Employees Union represents around 150,000 federal employees.

The freeze does not affect the 2.6-per-cent pay raise for U.S. troops that was part of a large defence spending bill Trump signed in August and will take effect next year. Trump recently boasted of the pay raise to the troops, though he said it would be a 10-per-cent increase.

There is still hope workers could receive a raise as part of a deal to end the government shutdown, if Congress approves it and it is signed by Trump.