Washington A government shutdown that threatened to jeopardize the paychecks of hundreds of thousands of federal employees came just days before the busiest time of year for the holidays.
Although a short-term spending bill signed into law by President Joe Biden has since been signed, many federal employees and contractors are upset that Congress put the country in danger of another funding lapse and caused financial uncertainty for the federal workforce.
While certain federal employees must report to work if their position is deemed vital, the majority are furloughed during a shutdown. Employees in both situations get their back pay after the shutdown is over, but if a budget bill isn’t signed into law, no new paychecks are produced.
Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) union, stated in an interview just before Congress passed the funding bill on Friday that although retroactive pay is guaranteed by law, bills, rent, and other financial obligations don’t wait, forcing families to make a difficult decision during these holiday seasons.
According to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management’s advice, a shutdown would not have caused a delay in paychecks for work completed earlier in December. However, depending on how long a shutdown lasted, paychecks that showed labor from the second half of the month might have been affected.
During a shutdown, members of Congress are still paid without interruption.
Approximately 800,000 federal employees were placed on furlough or worked unpaid during funding shortfalls in 2018 and 2019. At the height of the shutdown in 2013, some 850,000 people were placed on furlough per day.
Johnny Jones, a Transportation Security Administration officer at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, described how his colleagues were attempting to ascertain the effect of a shutdown on their holiday finances in the hours leading up to Congress’s passage of the funding package on Friday.
Most of our rank-and-file employees are living paycheck to paycheck. Jones, an AFGEunion officer, added, “But it’s the holidays, so these guys have already spent their savings buying Christmas gifts.” The true Grinches in this area will be the politicians.
Jones stated that in order to have enough cash on hand to weather a possible shutdown, his union’s members were thinking of returning or pawning holiday gifts.
The first 1,500-page bipartisan financing package that would have kept the federal government financed through the middle of March was essentially killed by President-elect Donald Trump and his ally Elon Musk, he said. (On Thursday night, the House rejected a revised version of the measure that Musk and Trump supported.)
According to Jones, the entire workforce was expecting money for the first few months of the year. The next thing you know, Elon Musk and Trump are in charge of our life.
According to Joe Shuker, a 66-year-old TSA officer at Philadelphia International Airport and an official in the AFGE union, he and his coworkers missed many paychecks during the 2018–19 closure.
Before the short-term budget agreement was passed by Congress, he stated, “We had guys going to food banks after they missed that first check.” Food was the top priority for a 26-year-old man who was struggling to make ends meet while also having children, a mortgage, and auto payments. They had to decide whether to put food on the table or fill up the automobile with gas.
Shuker went on to say that the Washington shutdown dispute had made an already stressful profession much more so.
We make a living searching for bombs. “It’s already stressful,” he remarked. There are a lot of concerns when an employee is anxious about how they will go to work the next day and how they will feed their children.
The U.S. Office of Personnel Management states that federal employees who were forced to work or placed on furlough will receive their compensation retroactively.Workers have previously received paid retroactively, and in 2019, Congress enacted a bill guaranteeing future back pay to furloughed workers.
However, the treatment of federal contractors is different. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget asserts that federal contractors are not entitled to reimbursement.
Jaime Contreras, executive vice president of 32BJ SEIU, whose members include government contractors in the Washington, D.C., area, said, “It’s really a dark day when an unelected billionaire like Elon Musk is able to tank a negotiated agreement at the eleventh hour, honestly, playing games with the livelihoods of hard working people like our members in the federal buildings.”
According to Contreras, his union represents about 2,400 employees who work under federal contracts, such as food service employees, cleaners, and security guards. He said that many members were not compensated during earlier government shutdowns.
Contreras stated before to Friday’s votes that “this is just not a way for us to treat [them], whether they are government employees or contracted government employees.” They have been devoted workers in the federal government. Simply put, it is incorrect.
Before the funding measure was approved, Bonita Williams, an 18-year veteran of the State Department’s federally contracted cleaning staff, had predicted that the most difficult aspect of weathering another shutdown would be finding food.
Williams, sixty-two, has thirteen grandchildren and five children. She claimed that all of her kids are federal employees as well, and that during a previous shutdown, they visited a food bank that had run out of supplies when they needed them.
When Congress was still rushing to enact a budget bill, Williams stated, “I’m mad because it ain’t gonna be no holiday, because you have to save your money because you don’t know what’s going to happen.” You need to consider whether you want to purchase food. Or would you like to purchase Christmas presents for your grandchildren?
She answered, “I’d rather see them with food on the table.”
Daniel Arkin reported from New York City, while Megan Lebowitz reported from Washington, D.C.
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