According to a recent article on Government Executive, the cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) for federal retirees in the Civil Service Retirement System will increase by 8.7% whereas the COLA for retirees in the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS) will only be increasing by 7.7%.
This disparity in COLAs between the two retirement systems has been a subject of concern lately, with Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., introducing the Equal COLA Act (S. 4221) that would ensure that federal retirees in the FERS and the CSRS both receive the same annual percentage cost of living increase each year.
According to Ken Thomas, national president of the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association, “This inequitable policy, enacted in the 1980s with the creation of FERS, fails to fully protect the earned value of FERS annuities, which decrease in value year after year—exactly what COLAs are intended to prevent.” Thomas also reiterated his organization’s call for the government to “calculate COLAs based on the consumer price index for the elderly (CPI-E) instead of the consumer price index for workers (CPI-W).”
To read the full article on Government Executive: click here
