Federal staffers await back pay
Government mum on number owed shutdown money
Two weeks after shutdown, many who are owed money are scrambling to catch up on unpaid bills.
Nearly two weeks after the end of the longest government shutdown in U.S history, many federal workers are still reeling financially and waiting to be made whole by government agencies that have struggled with payroll glitches and delays in ensuring everyone gets paid.
Thousands have not yet received full back pay while scrambling to catch up on unpaid bills and repay unemployment benefits — all while another government shutdown looms next week.
“President Trump stood in the Rose Garden at the end of the shutdown and said, ‘We will make sure that you guys are paid immediately.’ And here it is, it’s almost two weeks later,” said Michael Walter, who works for the U.S. Department of Agriculture food safety inspection service in Johnstown, Pa., and only got his paycheck Wednesday. He said two co-workers told him they still had received nothing.
The government has been short on details about how many people are still waiting to be paid.
A spokesman for the Department of Interior, which handles payroll for more than five dozen government offices, did not answer when asked how many workers were due back pay, but said a “small group of employees” had not received anything. Spokesman Russell Newell said others received “interim payments of back pay” that would be made up in the next pay period.
The Census Bureau acknowledged Tuesday that about 250 employees, or 6 percent of its work force, had yet to receive back pay. A spokesman said they expected those workers to be paid by Friday.
Other affected agencies include the Federal Aviation Administration, where two unions representing FAA workers said their members had not yet received all of their back pay.
Doug Church of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association said members who worked during the shutdown had not gotten overtime, which he said was a violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act. They also had not received the extra pay they were due for working nights and holidays, he said.
David Verardo, a union local president, said he was still owed $2,000 and estimated that the 1,000 workers his union represents at the National Science Foundation in Alexandria, Va., are each due $1,200 to $3,000 for the two pay periods they missed.
In addition to the pay delays, workers are struggling with issues like navigating the bureaucracy of paying back unemployment benefits and the looming question of whether there would be another shutdown after Feb. 15.
Trish Binkley, a tax examiner at the Internal Revenue Service in Kansas City, Mo., is setting aside money, including her tax refund and an emergency loan she got from her credit union, in case of another shutdown.
She received two unemployment checks of $288 each during the shutdown before getting a letter informing her she was ineligible for the benefits — even though she had been told she qualified. Binkley has paid the money back, but worries about another shutdown.
The shutdown motivated Cheryl Inzunza Blum to re-evaluate her career as a government contract lawyer representing immigrants in federal court in Tucson, Ariz. She has not been paid since before the shutdown began.
Blum realized she must diversify her solo law practice and plans to do more personal injury work. For the long term, she enrolled in an online course in international relations at Harvard Extension School to educate herself on what drives migration, and hopes to work on solutions to the issues surrounding immigration.
“I did it because I don’t want to go through this again,” she said. “I want to carve out another career, I really do.”
Among the groups hardest hit by the shutdown are contract workers who are not entitled to back pay.
The shutdown affected some 2,000 people with disabilities who got their government contract jobs with help from the nonprofit SourceAmerica, according to John Kelly, its vice president of government affairs and public policy.
Nearly 60 percent still had not been called back to their jobs.
It’s been a difficult time for those workers, who often have a hard time finding a job in the first place, Kelly said. Their jobs include custodial and mailroom work at agencies like NASA, the Coast Guard and the Department of the Interior, he said.