\n<\/p>\n
W<\/span>ith no end of the federal government shutdown in sight, an estimated 750,000 workers remain furloughed. Hundreds of thousands more are working without pay. They are being \u201cheld hostage by a political dispute\u201d, according to union leaders, as Republicans and Democrats remain deadlocked.<\/p>\n In the Oval Office on Tuesday, Donald Trump suggested that furloughed employees would not necessarily receive back pay \u2013 despite a legal guarantee \u2013 prompting further unease throughout the federal workforce. \u201cThere are some people that don\u2019t deserve to be taken care of, and we\u2019ll take care of them in a different way,\u201d the US president said.<\/p>\n The administration, meanwhile, continues to threaten mass firings if Democrats stand by their demands. \u201cIf this keeps going on, it\u2019ll be substantial,\u201d Trump told reporters. \u201cAnd a lot of those jobs will never come back.\u201d<\/p>\n On Friday, Russell Vought, the White House office of management and budget (OMB) director, announced on social media that layoffs had begun. Several federal agencies started announcing layoffs, but details remained scant on how many workers would be impacted.<\/p>\n After a brutal year for the federal workforce, employees who spoke to the Guardian expressed growing anxiety over their pay \u2013 and the future of their jobs.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is the third time I\u2019ve been furloughed in my federal career,\u201d said Priscilla Novak, a furloughed federal employee researcher. \u201cBut this is the first time there were threats of having people be fired en masse. I\u2019ve been checking my email every day to see if I\u2019m fired yet.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cEven before the shutdown, it\u2019s just kind of been one thing after another for us,\u201d said Peter Farruggia, a furloughed employee at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). \u201cI think a lot of us are expecting the worst, hoping for the best.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNot knowing when my next paycheck is going to get here is definitely very daunting,\u201d Farruggia, also executive committee chair of AFGE Local 2883, which represents CDC workers, added. \u201cBut at least I paid rent this month, so that was probably the most important thing. If some of my other bills go by the wayside, then it is what it is, and I don\u2019t really have any other options to seek out.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhat I\u2019m hearing is a lot of anxiety, confusion, and chaos,\u201d said Brent Barron, a US Department of Labor employee who serves as president of the National Council of Field Labor Locals, which represents workers at the department outside Washington DC. Some staffers don\u2019t even know whether they\u2019re furloughed or not, he claimed, let alone \u201cwhether or not they\u2019re going to continue to have a job\u201d for much longer.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are a lot of employees out there that can\u2019t even miss one check, let alone have this thing drag on for weeks and weeks and weeks,\u201d said Barron. About three-quarters of the labor department has been furloughed. \u201cAll we want to do is do our jobs.\u201d<\/p>\n A law signed by Trump during his first term, the Government Employee Fair Treatment Act, guarantees all federal workers receive retroactive back pay once a government shutdown is over.<\/p>\n \u201cIt really baffles me that this administration can just flaunt whatever law and say they don\u2019t have to follow it,\u201d said Barron. \u201cThis is a law that was passed in 2019 by Congress and signed by the president. And we all know who was president in 2019.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump officials are now facing calls to clarify that the federal government will follow the law, and ensure that every furloughed employee receives back pay.<\/p>\n \u201cGiven the clarity of the law, there is no place for the Administration to backpedal on its obligation to pay furloughed workers,\u201d labor unions and Democracy Defenders Fund, a watchdog group, wrote to the OMB on Wednesday. \u201cThe Administration\u2019s statements appear to be a naked attempt at inflicting pain on innocent parties to gain advantage in the shutdown.\u201d<\/p>\n OMB is led by Vought, an architect of the rightwing Project 2025 blueprint. In a private speech in 2023, Vought spoke of wanting to put officials \u201cthrough trauma\u201d to reduce the capacity of the federal government. \u201cWhen they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work.\u201d<\/p>\n As the administration continues to threaten mass layoffs, raising the prospect of further cuts beyond the 300,000 federal employees set to be removed from the government by the end of this year through firings and attrition programs, officials have also been ordered by a federal judge to provide specifics on the status of any layoff plans, the agencies affected, and whether any federal employees have been recalled to work to carry out reductions in force.<\/p>\n \u201cThe American people and the workers who keep this country running are being held hostage by a political dispute, by a petty political dispute that they have nothing to do with,\u201d Greg Regan, president of the AFL-CIO\u2019s transportation trades department, said during a press conference this week. \u201cThis is entirely vindictive and the only victims are going to be this country.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve all seen the reports every single time we go through this stupid process of a shutdown, how much the American taxpayers lost. It\u2019s a drain on our economy. It\u2019s a drain on our safety. It\u2019s a drain on the people that live here. So we need to put this to an end.\u201d<\/p>\n Almost all Transportation Security Administration (TSA) employees are required to work without pay during shutdowns, in a bid to minimize the threat of disruptions at key travel hubs like airports.<\/p>\n The uncertainty has been particularly unnerving for newer, lower-paid employees, according to Cameron Cochems, a lead TSA officer and vice-president for AFGE Local 1127, which represents the administration\u2019s employees in Idaho.<\/p>\n Workers are worried about when they start missing paychecks, he said, adding that several have asked where to get low interest loans to float them through missed paychecks.<\/p>\n \u201cIt feels kind of like there\u2019s just a train coming and you can hear the whistle blowing, but every day it gets a little closer and closer to us,\u201d Cochems told the Guardian. \u201cAnd right now we can barely hear the whistle because we\u2019re still focused on our jobs, we\u2019re still focused on the mission, which is protect the nation\u2019s transportation system to ensure freedom of movement for people in commerce.<\/p>\n \u201cBut once that paycheck doesn\u2019t come, I think that that train whistle is going to get louder in everyone\u2019s heads, and it could get so loud that people cannot focus on their job because they\u2019re focusing on things like \u2018The bank is calling me for the fifth time today\u2019, or \u2018I don\u2019t know how to pay for my daycare,\u2019 things like that.\u201d<\/p>\n Threats made about federal workers not being entitled to back pay by Trump and his top officials have heightened anxieties and fears and \u201cthrown a lot more people for a loop, especially the people that are disadvantaged, single parents or living paycheck to paycheck\u201d, added Cochems.<\/p>\n \u201cIt just feels like they\u2019re intentionally using us as political pawns, and they intentionally want to make our jobs and lives unstable,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cEven worse than morale is the future implication for how our government runs,\u201d added Novak. \u201cI think having a strong civil service that is not politically motivated is the most effective to render modern services for our citizens. Furloughed workers want to go back to work. We need Congress to pass a budget.\u201d<\/p>\n The White House and office of management and budget did not respond to multiple requests for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" With no end of the federal government shutdown in sight, an estimated 750,000 workers remain furloughed. Hundreds of thousands more are working without pay. They are being \u201cheld hostage by a political dispute\u201d, according to union leaders, as Republicans and Democrats remain deadlocked. In the Oval Office on Tuesday, Donald Trump suggested that furloughed employees<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27620,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[319,4817,558,13611,1040,1913,6228,11209,1755,5870,1438],"class_list":{"0":"post-27619","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-federal","9":"tag-firings","10":"tag-government","11":"tag-pawns","12":"tag-pay","13":"tag-political","14":"tag-reel","15":"tag-shutdown","16":"tag-threats","17":"tag-withheld","18":"tag-workers"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27619"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27619\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/27620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\u2018People cannot focus on their jobs\u2019<\/h2>\n