Twice in my experience federal government employees have taken an unwarranted beating. One has been mentioned, namely taking money from a surplus pension account to help balance budget. The other was the reduction in indexing for two years in the 80s. The irony here was that the mid 1980s were years of high inflation. And higher inflation means higher return on investment. Thus while the fund was earning more than usual money, money to retirees was reduced!!

The media said obvious things like decreasing indexing would help reduce the deficit. There was no mention that government pension coffers were being loaded more than usual. This is typical of the  treatment of government employees by the media.