The Student Loan Repayment Program
Learn how the union helps you pay back your student loans! The union negotiated the Student Loan Repayment Program for SEC employees. This generous benefit provides up to $10,000 per year in funds to help repay your student loan as a retention bonus, up to a total of $60,000. Employees are required to commit to staying at the agency for three years to participate. 
Many federal agencies do not have a student loan repayment program. Many SEC employees are not aware of the fact that the Union negotiated this benefit for them, and that the Union has been required to file national grievances on their behalf to prevent cutbacks in the Student Loan Repayment Program.
By way of background, although the Student Loan Repayment Program has been an available option for federal agencies for years, the SEC was not required to provide this benefit to its employees and, in fact, it did not do so for many years. It was not until NTEU came to the SEC several years ago and negotiated a Collective Bargaining Agreement with the agency that this program was first implemented (see Article 25 of the CBA). The program provides up to $10K per year in reimbursements, up to a total of $60K lifetime, in exchange for a three-year commitment to stay at the SEC.
We are proud say that the Student Loan Repayment Program negotiated by NTEU at the SEC is one of the very best in the federal government. According to the most recent information on the program made available by the Office of Personnel Management (released in 2008 for FY 2007), only 33 federal agencies provided 6,619 employees with a total of more than $42 million in student loan repayment benefits, with an average benefit of $6,377. The SEC is one of the five agencies making the most extensive use of this program, dispensing $3,390,076 -- which represents an impressive 8% of the entire federal government's outlay for student loan reimbursements, despite the fact that the SEC is a small agency. This type of program is a win-win for everyone involved. Employees get their student loans repaid early, enabling them to pursue a career in public service. And the SEC is afforded a powerful recruitment and retention tool to ensure that it continues to attract and keep the best and the brightest. NTEU is proud of its work to bring this program to you.
But the story doesn't end there...NTEU has continued to remain vigilant to prevent efforts by SEC management to cut back on this popular program. Indeed, in the recent past, the agency attempted to make several unilateral cutbacks to this important program, all of which the Union succeeded in fighting back by filing national grievances on your behalf. These proposed cutbacks that NTEU fought off included:
1. Attempting to recover more than three years of reimbursements when an employee leaves the agency before completing his or her three-year commitment. The agency has now agreed that it may only reach back to collect the last three years of reimbursements if for some reason you leave the SEC early.
2. Refusing to make further distributions to employees when their loan balances dropped below $10,000, even if the employee had not yet received the $60K lifetime cap. The SEC is no longer making this argument.
3. Attempting to force employees to make monthly payments on their loans, even when the disbursement they received under the program meant that they were not obligated to make such payments for some period of time under their individual loan agreements. The SEC is no longer imposing this rule.
4. Refusing to reimburse federal PLUS loans, which are loans that parents borrow to help defray the costs of their children's education. PLUS loans are expressly provided in the enabling legislation and regulations thereunder for student loan repayment programs. Retention bonuses are just as important for employees taking out PLUS loans as they are for recently graduated employees paying off their own loans. The agency signed a settlement with NTEU agreeing to continue to reimburse PLUS loans.
You can review the terms of the Student Loan Repayment Program in Article 25 of the Collective Bargaining Agreement between the SEC and NTEU.
The Student Loan Repayment Program is a good example of the kind of benefit that the union won for you, and then successfuly defended over the course of time. Please support our efforts by joining today.