The federal workers facing an unpaid furlough: 'We're being used as pawns'

When 9/11 happened, Amad Ali was already a veteran of the US marines. Believing he would fight the terrorists who attacked the US, he signed up for the army. He wound up in Iraq instead, disillusioned, fighting in a “conjured-up” conflict.

“A lot of us didn’t make it back and a lot of us – like myself – didn’t come back the same,” he said on Friday. “So yes, feeling duped by the federal government is something that I can relate to.”

Ali is now an employee of the Social Security Administration, in Indiana. He remains disheartened by the way the government treats the people he works with: in this case, federal employees facing an unpaid furlough if the government shuts down.

“We do feel that we are used as pawns and bargaining chips in the overall political process,” said Ali, who is also executive vice-president of a local federal government workers union.

As many as 800,000 federal employees will be furloughed on Saturday if Congress cannot come to an agreement to fund the government. Federal employees deemed essential, including active duty military personnel, will not be asked to stay home. It is likely they will see delays in their pay, if not outright stoppages.

‘We’re always forgotten’

Sabrina is a 23-year veteran of the National Parks Service who works in Washington DC, which, with its proliferation of memorials, has the highest concentration of national parks in the country.

Sabrina has been sent home on furlough three times before. The last was in 2013.

“Financially it’s going to take a toll on me,” she said. “I don’t have a lot of savings. I just put a daughter through college.”

Federal employees are typically discouraged from discussing shutdowns. Sabrina asked that her identity be changed, to avoid any repercussions from doing so.

The interior department has announced that if the government shuts down this weekend, national parks will remain open in a limited capacity. On Friday night, it was still unclear how many park rangers would be furloughed.

“All of us, we depend on that check,” she said. “A lot of these people are your middle class, and they’re check to check. Whenever we have shutdowns we feel like we’re always forgotten.”

Sabrina recalled how during the 2013 shutdown, which lasted for 16 days, she received two paychecks at their normal times – but for half their normal amount. That sent her scrambling to make ends meet, she said. In the long term, she was paid for all furloughed time. The same was not always true, though, for independent contractors.

“These are people who you work closely with, they’re your co-workers,” Sabrina said. “You’re going to get paid, but you know that those people are not. And that bothers me.”

Traditionally, furloughed workers have been paid wages owed after government shutdowns end. This process is not automatic. Two Virginia congressmen introduced legislation on Thursday that would guarantee such payments.

“We hope it will not be needed but time is running out,” said one of the lawmakers, the Democratic congressman Don Beyer.

Almost everything the federal government does is put at risk in a shutdown – including defense.

“Our maintenance activities will probably pretty much shut down … over 50% altogether of my civilian workforce will be furloughed,” said defense secretary Jim Mattis on Friday. “We do a lot of intelligence operations around the world and they cost money, those obviously would stop.”

According to a government contingency plan, in a shutdown the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will have a “significantly reduced capacity to respond to outbreak investigations, processing of laboratory samples, and maintaining the agency’s 24/7 emergency operations center”.

That could have an impact now, in an influenza season CDC officials have said is the worst since 2009.

If it comes to pass, the shutdown of 2018 will largely have been driven by congressional Democrats, who have refused to join any deal that does not include legal status for so-called Dreamers, young undocumented migrants brought to the country as children whose protection was rescinded by Trump.

Republicans control the White House and Congress but thanks to schisms in their own ranks need Democratic votes to pass a funding resolution.

Sabrina said she supported attempts to protect Dreamers. “That means that I am going to take a hit,” she said. “But I’ll take it because there’s something bigger in play here.”