WASHINGTON—A partial government shutdown, idling up to 840,000 federal workers, began at 12:01 am on Oct. 1, as President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans refused to budge on Democratic demands that the GOP’s health care cuts and insurance premium price hikes be taken off the table.
In a new development in the struggle, two big unions, the Government Employees (AFGE) and AFSCME, marched into U.S. District Court in San Francisco the day before to stop the mass firings of federal workers that Trump wants.
The unions, aided by the pro bono lawyers group Democracy Forward, seek an injunction against the Trump regime’s plans to use the shutdown as an excuse for mass firings—called in bureaucratese “reductions in force” or RIFs—of federal workers both during and after the shutdown.
Many federal workers’ groups and their allies say the shutdown happening now actually got underway on day one of the Trump administration, when he and Elon Musk started firing tens of thousands of the workers who perform the public services that Americans rely on every day.
Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., attended a rally with fired federal workers on the eve of the shutdown, where she held up a sign declaring, “Trump’s Shutdown Started with DOGE Firing Workers,” referring to Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.
Meanwhile, unions and workers started reporting the practical impact of the shutdown—everything from suffering hospital patients in Asheville, N.C., to closure of the Federal Aviation Administration’s school in Oklahoma City which trains aspiring air traffic controllers.
That’s particularly bad because the air traffic control system has been chronically short-staffed, by several thousand controllers a year, ever since GOP President Ronald Reagan fired all 14,000 PATCO members way back in 1981. Those controllers were forced to strike over unsafe conditions.
Management in some agencies are already trying to take advantage of the shutdown to put the squeeze on federal workers under their command. One federal worker reported to People’s World that a manager had informed workers in his workplace that, due to the government shutdown, their union’s collective bargaining agreement was “suspended.”
That’s untrue and illegal. Federal law keeps union contracts in place during shutdowns and guarantees furloughed workers receive back pay when the government re-opens.
Some Trump regime federal functions will not shut down. One is security and militarization of the U.S.-Mexico border. Another is ICE deportation raids, which have killed at least three people, arrested, detained, and deported thousands, and injured observers and journalists. Also still set to go ahead is Trump’s fiscal bailout of his right-wing ally, Argentina’s President Javier Milei.
The shutdown occurred because Trump and the congressional Republican majority held fast to their stand for a so-called “clean” temporary money bill, called a continuing resolution (CR), to keep the government going, the doors open, and the lights on through Nov. 22.
Democrats, whose support Trump needs to reach the 60 votes required in the Senate, insist the CR must repeal the massive Medicaid cuts in Trump’s earlier “Big Beautiful Bill” and must preserve an Obamacare tax credit that millions of people use to help pay for their health insurance.
Without the tax credit, which expires at the end of 2025, people would suffer premium increases of thousands of dollars each from insurance companies, turned loose to hike the costs.
National Air Traffic Controllers Association President Nick Daniels warned overworked, overstressed air traffic controllers would suffer even more by being “forced to work without pay, often under grueling schedules of six days a week, 10 hours a day.
“During the last shutdown, many had to take second jobs to feed their families and pay their bills—leading to stress and fatigue,” the letter from NATCA, the Association of Flight Attendants/CWA, and other aviation groups told congressional leaders.
“Some 2,350 NATCA-represented aviation safety professionals—including aircraft certification engineers and aerospace engineers—will be furloughed. Critical safety support, operational support, and modernization work will stop,” Daniels warned. Air Line Pilots President Capt. Jason Ambrosi added “a shutdown threatens the stability of the safest aviation system in the world.”
The lawsuit in San Francisco may turn out to be a big deal. At Trump’s order, his Office of Management and Budget Director, Russell Vought, sent a memo last week to agency chiefs ordering RIFs when a shutdown hits.
Vought added that even after the shutdown eventually ends, the RIFs, which are mass firings for no reason at all and especially of workers who don’t work on Trump’s agenda, should continue.
Carrying on with more firings would continue the Trump-Vought effort, which their corporate backers applaud, to shrink the size of the federal workforce. That would let firms continue malfeasance and criminality as the number of regulators and auditors in various sectors of the economy would shrivel.
Trump and Vought also want to reinstitute the spoils system of the Gilded Age, where what help—or hurt—you got from the government depended on your clout and whom you voted for.
AFGE, AFSCME, and Democracy Forward all warned of various harms from the planned mass firings.
“Announcing plans to fire potentially tens of thousands of federal employees simply because Congress and the administration are at odds on funding the government is not only illegal. It’s immoral and unconscionable,” said AFGE President Everett Kelley.
“Federal employees dedicate their careers to public service. More than a third are military veterans,” including Kelley himself. “The contempt being shown them by this administration is appalling.”
“The Trump administration is again breaking the law to push its extreme Project 2025 agenda, illegally targeting federal workers with threats of mass firings due to the shutdown,” said AFSCME President Lee Saunders.
“If these mass firings take place, the people who keep our skies safe for travel, our food supply secure, and our communities protected will lose their jobs. “ Saunders called Trump “hell-bent on stripping away their collective bargaining rights and jobs.”
The president “is using the civil service as a bargaining chip as he marches the American people into a shutdown. Federal workers do the work of the people and playing games with their livelihoods is cruel and unlawful. That is why we sued today,” said Democracy Forward President Skye Perryman.
“Since inauguration, this administration has pursued a harmful agenda, attacking community programs and charities, lawyers, schools, private companies, law firms, judges, universities, public servants, and the programs, foundations, and civil servants working to deliver services to people and keep communities safe. No one’s lives have been made easier or better by these actions, and we will continue to meet these attacks in court.”
Registered nurses at Mission Hospital in Asheville, N.C., members of National Nurses United, didn’t wait for the shutdown to begin to forecast its impact on their patients. Wielding sirens and flashing alarms, they marched in informational picketing there on Sept. 30. They explained their patients suffer from staff shortages, which will worsen due to Trump’s Medicaid cuts—the cuts the Democrats in Congress are trying to reverse.
Mission Hospital, owned by a big for-profit chain, the Hospital Corporation of America, exhibits “poor performance in staffing, health and safety, recruitment and retention, and meal and rest breaks,” an NNU release said.
“These patient care issues continue as patients grapple with Medicaid cuts starting Oct. 1, unless state legislators act. These cuts will impact more than three million North Carolina patients.” So the RNs are “literally sounding the alarm because patients are already feeling the consequences.”
“The American people are always the ones hurt when the government shuts down. It locks out workers and hurts Americans who need government services,” Teachers/AFT President Randi Weingarten, a New York City civics and government teacher, elaborated.
“This one was completely avoidable if President Trump and the Republicans who control the government had decided to address the healthcare emergency they created in their July omnibus bill rather than defund the government.” That “big, ugly bill,” as unions call it, “will close hospitals and rural clinics [and] cost millions of people their health insurance.”
ACA clients “will pay thousands of dollars in higher premiums––all so corporations and the ultrarich can pocket even more in tax giveaways.”
Speaking of Trump and the GOP majority, Weingarten added: “Rather than stopping premium hikes for millions…they are holding the American people hostage, refusing to fund essential services unless their harmful policies remain in place. On top of that, they’re again hurting federal workers and the essential services they provide by threatening illegal mass layoffs.”
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