APWU: The Social Security Fairness Act

July 21, 2023 APWU members are continuing to advocate for the passage of the Social Security Fairness Act, H.R. 82 and S. 597. These bills were introduced by Rep. Garret Graves (R-LA-06) and Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), with a number of bi-partisan original co-sponsors in both chambers. The Act would repeal the Windfall Elimination Provision…

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USPS OIG Report: Historical Analysis of USPS Retirement Fund Returns

April 26, 2023 By law, the Postal Service’s retiree assets are invested exclusively in U.S. Treasury securities, which pose little risk and generate low investment returns. If the Postal Service wanted to invest in other assets, congressional action would be required. An OIG analysis found the Postal Service could have had $1.2 trillion in retirement…

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APWU: Annual Leave Payment Limitations for Retirees

December 24, 2020 For APWU members planning on retiring at the end of the year, you may be affected by limitations to the annual leave carryover. Due to the COVID-19 crisis, the APWU worked to negotiate various MOUs that would be beneficial to all of us during the pandemic. One of those MOUs was to…

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USPS: Understanding Survivor Benefits

Do you know about survivor benefits and how they work? You can make one of the following survivor benefit elections to occur in the event of your death: No survivor benefits Full or partial annuity for spouse Full or partial annuity for former spouse Combination of full or partial annuity for a spouse and former…

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USPS OIG Report: Options to Reduce Unfunded Retirement Liabilities

Objective The Postal Service participates in three retirement plans: the Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS), the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS), and the Postal Service Retiree Health Benefits (RHB). The first two are pension plans and the third is set up to fund the Postal Service’s share of RHB premiums. The U.S. Office of Personnel…

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USPS OIG Report: Foreign Posts’ Retirement Asset Investments

The U.S. Postal Service participates in two government-wide pension plans that are administered by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM): the Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS) and Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS). The assets of these plans are held in one trust fund, the Civil Service Retirement and Disability Fund, and are managed by…

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USPS OIG Report: Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities

Objective The Postal Service participates in three retirement plans: The Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS), the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS), and the Postal Service Retiree Health Benefits (RHB). The first two are pension plans, and the third is set up to fund RHB premiums. The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) administers these programs, including…

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Update on the Postal Service’s Share of CSRS Pension Responsibility

May 7, 2018 (RARC-WP-18-009) When Postal Service employees retire under the Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS), somebody has to pay for their pensions. For people who used to work for the former Post Office Department and then later worked for the Postal Service, the federal government and the Postal Service split pension costs. Under the…

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