WASHINGTON—Many thousands whose only income is the paycheck they get from their employer, the federal government, got their first $0 paychecks last Friday. It was what more than 750,000 of them earned despite having worked every day for a full pay period.
In addition, there are 670,000 federal workers furloughed without pay. And that doesn’t count the thousands fired and left with no union contracts. For most of them, it means not just empty refrigerators but bills and unpaid rent and mortgages piling up with no end to the misery in sight.
In Chicago’s Jackson Park, a woman watching over three dogs playfully galloping in the dog park said she worked for Social Security and had taken the job as a dog walker “so at least some money is coming in.” She said it was the only way to feed her own dog, which was one of the three she was watching.
Many are relying on special food banks that are set up, particularly in Washington D.C, which is home to a fifth of the federal workforce.
The anxiety level of federal workers is through the roof, coming as the government shutdown does, on top of Trump’s attacks on federal workers, including his illegal and unconstitutional reductions in the workforce of programs approved by Congress. A worker who received her first $0 paycheck told the New York Times, “I just started crying.”
The largest union of government workers, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), is demanding that Congress end the shutdown, but that all the workers involved receive the back pay they are owed for having worked without a salary. Trump has said that he may not fulfill that obligation, even though it is required by federal law.
Kelley’s statement is important because his union, which has 820,000 members, has lost dues and its contracts covering a total of more than a million employees, but it is still technically obliged to represent the workers.
Trump and Vought summarily trashed the contracts earlier this year.
Elimination of the contracts led Kelley and AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler to label Trump’s eradication the biggest union-busting move in U.S. history.
AFGE President Everett Kelley explained that his members and all federal workers have toiled for the public—or not, if they were sent home—for a month with no pay. “They can’t pay the rent or the mortgage, they’re running up credit card bills, and they’ve had to visit soup kitchens and food banks for meals.
“These are patriotic Americans–parents, caregivers, and veterans–forced to work without pay while struggling to cover rent, groceries, gas, and medicine because of political disagreements in Washington. That is unacceptable,” Kelley said.
“Unfortunately, shutdowns have become a recurring tactic in Washington. But there is no ‘winning’ a government shutdown. They cost taxpayers billions, hurt small businesses, and erode confidence in government itself. And the American people know this. That’s why nine out of 10 Americans think this government shutdown is a problem.
“It’s time for our leaders to start focusing on how to solve problems for the American people, rather than on who is going to get the blame for a shutdown that Americans dislike,” the union leader said. He is now calling for the immediate reopening of the government, with the debate on healthcare continuing after that is done.
The public may hate the shutdown, but corporate leaders have been notably silent about it. No government means no oversight of their depredations, exploitation, and law-breaking, including labor law-breaking.
Kelley didn’t mention that. “The national interest requires Congress to act immediately to bring every federal employee back to work, pay them for the work they’ve already done–or been locked out from doing–and continue having the debates and disagreements that are the hallmark of a strong democracy, without punishing the people who keep our nation running,” his statement on AFGE’s website said.
Matt Biggs, president of the Professional and Technical Engineers, agreed with Kelley. But Biggs warned Vought, who has been illegally impounding money Congress appropriated and illegally shutting programs Congress approved, could foul up the whole deal.
Other federal worker union leaders, who have been winning a string of anti-Trump cases in U.S. district courts—including cases challenging Trump’s no-pay edict—were silent about Kelley’s call for a clean Continuing Resolution and taking up the fight for extensions of the healthcare credits later. The Trump regime plans to appeal the most recent union wins, achieved in federal court in San Francisco in mid-October.
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