MARKEY TO PREZ: QUIT HOLDING FED WORKERS HOSTAGE
U.S. Sen. Ed Markey joined federal workers who aren’t getting paychecks amid the lingering government shutdown at a rally Friday to call on President Trump to drop his demand for funding for a wall on the southern U.S. border.
Furloughed workers carrying signs with messages such as “Don’t Wall Feds Out” chanted “Let us serve” and “We want to work” in the frigid cold as others described the toll the threeweek impasse is beginning to have on their families.
Markey accused the president of using federal workers as “hostages” and “pawns” in a political game and said he will forgo his Senate paycheck until all federal workers get paid.
Leiran Biton, a furloughed employee with the Environmental Protection Agency, said if the shutdown lasts for months, he suspects federal workers will start looking for other jobs.
“We’re not gonna stick around,” he said.
“My job has nothing to do with the wall, border security, immigration,” said Biton, a 39-year-old with two kids who works in the EPA’s air permitting program. “Get me back to work.”
Federal prison workers, who are still working but aren’t getting paid, held signs that read: “Law enforcement officers are not pawns in your chess game.”
David Martinez, who represents workers at a federal prison in Massachusetts, called it a “tragedy” that prison staff must continue to work in dangerous conditions without knowing when their next paycheck will arrive.
“The risk to us hasn’t changed one iota. Tonight, here in the commonwealth and across this country where there is a federal prison, my co-workers will go into housing units, they’ll be locked in with over 200 sex offenders, murderers and drug dealers and they’ll be all alone,” Martinez said.