On October 17th furloughed federal employees returned to work, and they will receive full pay for the days off on furlough during the government shutdown since that was included in the bill signed by both houses of Congress and the President (and was promised by the President in a 10/17/13 open letter to employees).  But in the meantime two pieces of legislation affecting federal employees remain on the Congressional docket.   

Both HR 2748 and S.1486 are still being considered. Although both bills are dubbed Postal reform bills, they contain provisions affecting all federal employees. Both these laws reduce workers' compensation (FECA) benefits for all federal employees, in various objectionable ways described in previous newsletters.  

HR 2748, the Postal Reform Act of 2013, was reported out of committee on 07/24/13 but no action on it has been taken by the full House.  The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, chaired by Rep. Darrel Issa (R-CA), reported this bill out of committee 5 days after it was introduced in the House, co-sponsored by Republican representatives from Florida and Texas. GovTrack estimates the bill has a 20% chance of being enacted into law.  

S. 1486, also called the Postal Reform Act of 2013, was introduced on 08/01/13 by Sen. Thomas Carper (D-DE) and was referred to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on the same date.  It is co-sponsored by Sen. Thomas Coburn (R-OK).  The Committee has taken no action on the bill as of this date. GovTrack estimates this bill has a 74% chance of being reported out of committee and a 41% chance being enacted into law.  Its proposed changes to FECA are less drastic than those in HR 2748 but still would be unfairly harmful to injured federal employees.