Benefits

Federal employees will pay an average of 5.6% more for their health insurance premiums in 2020, a dramatic uptick from the historically low increase workers saw this year.
The government’s share of Federal Employees Health Benefits Program premiums will rise by 3.2%, the Office of Personnel Management announced on Wednesday, and the government will cover an average of 70% of each enrollee’s total premium costs. While the enrollee share of the rates increased just 1.5% in 2019, they jumped by 6.1% in 2018. About 8.2 million former and current federal employees, and their family members, are currently enrolled in FEHBP.
Non-postal federal workers will pay an average of $8.74 more per paycheck for their insurance in 2020. Those in “self-only” coverage will pay $4.72 more per paycheck, while those with family plans will see an average increase of $14.20.
U.S. Postal Service employees will pay an average of $10.31 more for their premiums, with exact increases dependent on their plan.
Laurie Bodenheimer, OPM’s acting director of health care and insurance, noted that the exact amount federal employees end up paying will depend on the plans for which they sign up. While the average premium was predicted to increase by 1.5% in 2019, employees ended up paying just 0.42% more on average, based on the plans they actually chose.
OPM added two new plans for employees nationwide, as well as 16 new options in local areas, as a result of its offering an indemnity benefit plan for the first time in 30 years. Those “fee-for-service” plans allow enrollees to go to virtually any health care provider and receive reimbursement for a set percentage of their costs. After a competitive bidding process, GEHA won the opportunity to provide the indemnity plans.
Bodenheimer conceded that “at this point in time” the indemnity benefit plans are not different from existing fee-for-service plans. Having an additional carrier to offer nationwide plans, she added, is itself a significant upgrade.
Officials said the sharper increase for 2020 rates was a result of Congress reinstituting the Health Insurance Provider’s Fee, which it waived last year. The fee was created as part of the Affordable Care Act to help fund state exchanges and is paid for by insurance companies. Officials also pointed to rising drug costs as contributing to the overall rate increases.
“Today’s announcement is the culmination of a yearlong effort,” OPM Director Dale Cabaniss said. “Our employees have worked tirelessly on behalf of all feds to secure them world-class healthcare and give them the knowledge to make informed decisions for their families.”
American Federation of Government Employees National President J. David Cox criticized OPM for failing to further rein in the growth of costs.
“The Trump administration has failed to do its job of providing affordable health insurance to its workforce,” Cox said. “Shifting more health-care costs onto federal workers and retirees will force growing numbers to choose between keeping their health insurance or paying for rent and other costs of daily living.”
All told, OPM will offer 279 health care options to enrollees, an increase of 14 from 2019. Individuals will not have that many options—as available plans vary by region—but every enrollee will be able to choose from 18 nationwide plans. About 5-6% of FEHBP enrollees opt to change their plan each year, a portion OPM believes is too low.
“We wish it was higher,” Bodenheimer said.
About 6,300 enrollees will be forced to sign up for a new plan after two carriers dropped out of the program. If those individuals fail to make a new selection, OPM will automatically enroll them in a GEHA plan.
New features in FEHBP next year will include more benefits for mental health and substance abuse treatment, Bodenheimer said. Plans will offer more services to help enrollees quit smoking, as well as enhanced services for individuals with chronic conditions. OPM has also improved its plan comparison tool, which enrollees will be able to access one week before the Open Season period begins.
Enrollees in the Federal Employees Dental/Vision Program will pay 5.6% more on average for their dental plans, and 1.5% more for vision. Bodenheimer applauded the growth FEDVIP has seen in recent years, including 1 million new enrollees last year driven driven largely by merging it with a previously separate program for retirees.
OPM will run open season, the annual period in which all federal employees and retirees can make changes to their health care enrollments, from Nov. 11 through Dec. 9.

If you need any assistance during this open enrollment or thinking about retirement, please feel free to Contact Us to schedule your Free Retirement Review today!

The U.S. Postal Service has a serious middle management problem.

In late July, the National Association of Postal Supervisors filed a federal lawsuit against the U.S. Postal Service, challenging its administration of the pay system that covers approximately 50,000 managers and supervisors. It is the first time in nearly 45 years that NAPS, on behalf of the postal managers and supervisors it represents, has sued the Postal Service over pay.
NAPS went to court because the Postal Service has violated the law’s requirement that it pay managers and supervisors a salary comparable to the pay of their private sector counterparts and that it pay them more than the workers they supervise. These managers and supervisors help to assure the prompt and efficient delivery of mail and the reliability of postal operations. Without a “supervisory differential” in pay, the incentive of craft workers to become supervisors is sorely undermined, and without compensation comparable to the private sector, the Postal Service cannot recruit well-qualified supervisors from outside the Service.
NAPS was prompted to file the lawsuit after the Postal Service in May 2019 issued the final terms of its 2016-2019 pay package for all personnel under the Executive and Administrative Schedule (EAS), which covers the nearly 50,000 managers, supervisors and other middle-management employees who are not members of collective bargaining units. The terms of the Postal Service’s pay package were largely the same as it had first proposed in 2017, before more than a year of “consultation” with NAPS’s leaders and before a review by a three-member fact-finding panel convened in 2018 at NAPS’s request by the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service. The fact-finding panel extensively reviewed the fairness of the Postal Service’s pay system for its managers and supervisors and unanimously found that the so-called “pay-for-performance” system the Postal Service had devised and applied to all postal managers and supervisors is “seriously flawed.”
Instead of accepting the panel’s recommendations, the Postal Service rejected nearly all of them, resulting in NAPS’s executive board voting unanimously to file a lawsuit contesting the Postal Service’s EAS pay policies and practices. In the lawsuit, filed in federal district court in Washington, NAPS also seeks a court ruling directing the Postal Service to recognize NAPS as a rightful representative of postmasters and EAS Headquarters and Area personnel. Unfortunately, the USPS denial of NAPS’s right to represent all EAS and postmasters is part of a continued effort by USPS executives to “divide and conquer” the EAS mid-level management ranks.
In its April 2019 factfinding report, the federal mediation panel unanimously concurred with NAPS on nearly all matters, strongly validating NAPS’s complaints about Postal Service EAS pay policies. The panel found that the Postal Service’s [pay for performance] system is “seriously flawed in that it does not accomplish its objectives or comport with the requirements of the [Postal Reorganization Act].” It also found that the Postal Service does not properly calculate the supervisory pay differential, which “has resulted in many thousands of Field EAS managers and supervisors receiving less than the Service’s own 5% target differential.” And it found that “the [pay for performance] program negatively impacts the Service’s ability to attract and retain qualified and capable supervisory and managerial personnel and fails to promote the maintenance of a well-motivated workforce.”
Experts in human resources continually stress the importance of worker engagement. Engaged workers create a positive impact on the bottom line of the enterprise, improving customer service, reducing absenteeism, and lowering accidents. The Postal Service has declined to put those principles into action, or even to become alarmed that its own Pulse Survey of the USPS workforce, conducted by Gallup, placed its employees in the bottom percentile of engaged workers in the nation. The Postal Service has taken no meaningful action despite the Gallup survey finding for the past several years that 99% of other large American companies have better employee engagement.
Postal managers and supervisors have grown increasingly frustrated over their pay and the lack of respect given by USPS executives to their role within the organization. At NAPS’s biennial national convention in August 2018, delegate frustration boiled over about the EAS PFP system that has produced years of paltry annual pay increases, including no pay raises for any EAS personnel in 2011 and 2012 and no pay raises for thousands of EAS personnel in 2015, 2017, and 2018. In contrast, all union-covered postal workers receive annual cost-of-living pay adjustments under agreements negotiated with the Postal Service. Further, unlike the rest of the agencies in the federal government, the USPS does not provide area wages or locality pay adjustments to workers in higher-cost areas, such as San Francisco, New York or Washington, D.C.
Now, a federal court will decide whether the panel was correct in finding that the Postal Service has violated—and continues to violate—the law’s requirements.

The Agriculture Department this week informed employees at two scientific agencies who applied for buyouts following their decision not to relocate to Kansas City that they would receive significantly less money than originally promised.
In June, USDA officials told employees at the Economic Research Service and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture that it would offer “a limited number” of Voluntary Early Retirement Authority and Voluntary Separation Incentive Payments to those who declined to move to Kansas City by the end of September. VSIP payments would be capped at $25,000, the maximum allowed by law, the department said in a memo.
When employees accept buyouts, they receive a lump sum equal to the amount offered by the agency, or their total severance pay, whichever is less. Additionally, employees who accept buyouts cannot work for the federal government for at least five years, or they will be required to repay the government the entire amount of their VSIP payment.
But this week, the department sent employees their VSIP acceptance letters, which noted that the maximum buyout payment would be only $10,000, a 60% cut from what was initially offered. Employees have until August 26 to decide whether to accept the buyout.
Due to the volume of applications and in an effort to afford all employees who applied the opportunity to receive the incentive payment, the amount provided for all applicants has changed from $25,000 to $10,000, USDA wrote.
ERS and NIFA employees had until July 15 to tell the department their initial intentions regarding whether they would agree to relocate to Kansas City, although they have until the end of September to make a final decision. Employees interested in early retirement or buyout payments were required to apply between July 22 and July 29.
It is unclear why the department did not announce a decrease in the maximum buyout payment ahead of that window, given that officials knew that more than half of ERS and NIFA employees already either declined to relocate or did not respond to their relocation orders.
An Agriculture Department spokesperson told Government Executive that the department decided it would be more equitable to allow all employees who applied to receive a buyout, rather than offering a larger sum to fewer people on a first-come first-served basis.
“The department maintained we would offer a limited amount of VSIPs and ultimately decided to offer a VSIP to every employee who applied and were found to be eligible to receive a VSIP,” the spokesperson said.
The department did not answer questions about how much was budgeted for VERA and VSIP, when it realized the volume of buyouts would be higher than could be accommodated at the $25,000 level, or why officials did not inform employees until this week.
The spokesperson said that although the VSIP acceptance form is due on August 26, employees can change their mind “and decline the VSIP payment up until their separation or retirement date.” Employees also are still able to change their mind and accept relocation orders.
In a statement, American Federation of Government Employees National President J. David Cox, whose union represents ERS and NIFA workers, sharply criticized the department’s handling of buyout payments. The department’s VSIP process began prior to USDA’s recognition of the agencies’s bargaining units and thus was not part of the agreement reached between the parties earlier this month to ease the impacts of the planned relocation.
“It’s no secret that employees are extremely upset by USDA’s decision to relocate these two agencies halfway across the country,” Cox said. “Two-thirds of employees rejected the agency’s orders to move by Sept. 30, so USDA should have planned better for that reality and budgeted accordingly. Employees now have less than a week to decide whether to accept the reduced buyout, which also bars them from working at another federal agency for five years. Many of these employees have spent their careers devoted to agricultural research and furthering their agencies’s missions, and they deserve to be treated better than this.”

Nearly a week after the Forest Service told 1,065 employees their jobs would be terminatedlater this year, federal workers are still waiting to learn what, if any, their options are for early retirement, severance pay or job placement elsewhere in government.

The employees at the agency’s Job Corps Civilian Conservation Centers learned during a conference call on May 24 that the Agriculture Department, the Forest Service’s parent organization, planned to transfer the centers to the Labor Department by the end of September.

While Labor runs the Jobs Corps program nationwide, the Forest Service has operated the Civilian Conservation Centers for decades under an interagency agreement with the department. Labor said it plans to close nine of the centers, which train young people for jobs in conservation and wildland firefighting, and contract out the work at the 15 remaining centers.

In the call with affected workers, Forest Service Chief Victoria Christiansen said the agency would seek reduction in force authority from the Office of Personnel Management so it can offer affected workers job placement assistance, severance pay or early retirement options. She reiterated that commitment in a memo to all employees Friday, when she wrote, “We will need to permanently transition the Forest Service Job Corps workforce and will seek reduction in force authority to do so.”

But in response to Christiansen’s comments reported previously, an OPM spokesperson contacted Government Executive to say, “OPM is not involved in, nor do we approve, agency RIF actions. Agencies are responsible for determining whether a RIF is necessary, and if so, carrying out a RIF in their agency.”

OPM’s website, however, states, “An agency must request [Voluntary Early Retirement Authority] and receive approval from the Office of Personnel Management before the agency may offer early retirement to its employees. It also notes:

“The Voluntary Separation Incentive Payment Authority, also known as buyout authority, allows agencies that are downsizing or restructuring to offer employees lump-sum payments up to $25,000 as an incentive to voluntarily separate. When authorized by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), an agency may offer VSIP to employees who are in surplus positions or have skills that are no longer needed in the workforce who volunteer to separate by resignation, optional retirement, or by voluntary early retirement, if approved.”

So what does this mean for employees? Will they be offered early retirement or severance payments? It’s not clear at this time. The Forest Service public affairs office referred a reporter’s questions to the Agriculture Department, which in turn referred questions to Labor. Neither department responded to requests for information about early retirement, severance pay or job placement options for employees.

In a letter last week to Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said USDA’s decision to end its role in the Job Corps program was part of a broader effort to streamline operations at the department: “As USDA looks to the future, it is imperative that the Forest Service focus on and prioritize our core natural resource mission to improve the condition and resilience of our nation’s forests, and step away from activities and programs that are not essential to that core mission.”

According to a Labor spokesperson, “At the vast majority of Forest Service Job Corps centers, student services will continue without interruption.” Labor will contract out the work in accordance with the Federal Acquisition Regulation, which means contract awards will likely be made next year.

The decision to close specific centers was “made carefully with an eye on past performance, efficiency, and student access,” the spokesperson said. “Deactivations do not represent a diminution of the program, but rather a long-term enhancement of it, as they will lead to a higher-performing, more efficient program.” At the centers slated to close, “new student enrollment will cease and existing students will have an opportunity to complete their education and skill instruction,” the spokesperson said.

The transition of the centers to Labor is expected to be completed by the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30. On Thursday, Labor published a notice in theFederal Register requesting comment on its decision to close nine of the Civilian Conservation Centers. The comment period will be open for 30 days.

Transfer Was Long Planned

The Trump administration first announced its intention to transfer the Forest Service-run Job Corps centers in its 2019 budget proposal, released in February 2018. In the Labor Department funding section, it wrote:

“The Budget takes aggressive steps to improve Job Corps for the youth it serves by: closing centers that do a poor job educating and preparing students for jobs; focusing the program on the older youth for whom the program is more effective; improving center safety; and making other changes to sharpen program quality and efficiency. As part of this reform effort, the budget ends the Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) role in the program, unifying responsibility in DOL. Workforce development is not a core USDA role, and the 26 centers it operates are overrepresented in the lowest performing cohort of centers.”

But the union that represents Forest Service personnel vehemently disputes the assertion that the CCC’s are underperforming: “As shown by [Labor’s] own data, this is false,” the National Federal of Federal Employees wrote in a special report shortly after the administration released its 2019 budget proposal. Citing Labor Department data from 2017, the union noted that the Forest Service centers were actually underrepresented in the lowest-performing quartile—not overrepresented as claimed in the administration’s budget justification—and include the highest-performing centers in the country.

“In addition, a recent [Labor Department] analysis shows that [the Forest Service’s Civilian Conservation Centers] are substantially more cost effective than comparable centers run by private contractors,” the report found.

The union acknowledged that an analysis of Job Corps centers in 2014 showed the CCCs were substantially underperforming, but said the Forest Service took steps to turn the centers around and hold leaders accountable for performance.

“The results were striking,” the report found. One of the centers, Blackwell CCC in Laona, Wisconsin, was ranked 124th out of 125 total Job Corps centers in 2014, but by 2017 had risen to 19th. Another center, Oconaluftee CCC in Cherokee, North Carolina, went from 119th in 2014 to 21st in 2017. Both of those centers are now slated for closure.