How The Shutdown Is Affecting Federal Workers And Services

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Hey there, it's the NPR Politics podcast.

I'm Tamar Keith.

I cover the White House.

I'm Stephen Fowler.

I cover politics.

And we're joined by NPR labor and workplace correspondent Andrea Hsu.

Hi, Andrea.

Hey, thanks for having me back.

Yeah, we are one week into the government shutdown, and there is no clear end in sight.

So today on the show, we'll talk about how this shutdown is affecting federal workers, as well as everyone else who relies on the federal government.

Stephen, it can be hard to keep track of of who's working and who's working without pay and who's not working at all right now.

Which agencies are operating at full force, which ones aren't.

Give us the landscape.

Well, a government shutdown is a bit of a misnomer.

It is not like everything in the government grinds to a halt.

There are large pockets of the federal government still operating.

You have some people that are operating and working and doing their services without pay.

You have some people that are working with pay because their funding source comes from somewhere else other than Congress trying to get enough votes for the bills.

The VA, for example, only 3% of their workforce is being furloughed.

They've said that the shutdown doesn't affect veteran health care, things like that.

Then you have other agencies like the Commerce Department, where they say 80% of their staff is being furloughed.

So it's a bit of a mix, that's a bit of a grab bag, and each agency has their own contingency plans that they put forth where they say these are the people that are essential to keep working, and these are the people that we need to stay home and not do anything.

Another one, just to toss in, there is Homeland Security, well-staffed, and also active duty military who continue to work, though they are not getting paid either.

Andrea, do you have the big numbers?

Like what share of the federal workforce is furloughed or what share is working without pay?

Yeah, well, before the shutdown started, the Congressional Budget Office put out this estimate of 750,000 civilians would be furloughed.

That was based on the contingency plans that Stephen just mentioned.

And that's roughly a third of the civilian workforce.

I will say, you know, I had federal workers tell me this shutdown has been like no other.

And some of them didn't know until Wednesday morning, October 1st, whether they were going to be furloughed or whether they were going to be asked to work without pay.

I mean, a lot of these decisions, it seems like, came down to the last minute.

There are some agencies, as Stephen mentioned, that we knew were going to largely operate through the shutdown, like the Social Security Administration, where about 45,000 out of 50 odd thousand people are working without pay to make sure retirees are still going to get their checks.

Speaking of checks, we're talking about people working without pay, but people don't get paid every single day.

There are paychecks that come on a regular interval.

And when that pay is actually missed is likely to be one of these big pressure points where members of Congress really feel it and where federal workers really feel it.

So

when does that rubber hit the road?

Yeah, so most federal employees are still expecting to get a paycheck next week.

Now, that will be for the last pay period, which ended October 3rd.

So, they will get paid through September 30th.

They'll miss a few days' pay in that paycheck.

It will be two weeks after that, where they will not get a paycheck.

Even those who have been working, they will not get a paycheck for the work they have been doing.

Members of the military are expecting to miss their first paycheck October 15th, so even sooner than that.

And in terms of services, what do we know is being affected by this shutdown?

What might people feel?

Well, one of the most well-known examples from previous shutdowns have been the Federal Aviation Administration and air traffic controllers.

You need air traffic controllers to have planes in the sky.

And in the past few days, we've had reports of staffing issues, including the Hollywood-Burbank airport, which had the air traffic control tower unmanned for several hours because of people calling out sick and there not being enough people to staff it.

So that's one example.

You also have like the TSA that does the security for the airports as another example that people interact with, where you would see the service degrade over time the longer that the shutdown happens.

You know, at the VA, for example, as Stephen mentioned, medical centers are open, hospitals are open, the crisis hotlines are still operating, but some regional benefits offices are closed.

Career counseling, public affairs, these are the kinds of things that are not operating right now during the shutdown.

All right.

Well, we're going to take a quick break and we will have more in a moment.

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And we're back, and we've been talking about some of the ways the federal government shutdown is affecting things inside and outside of Washington.

Even before the shutdown started, the White House was warning there would be layoffs, mass firings, not just the usual furloughs.

Andrea, now that we're a week in, are there signs of that happening?

Not yet.

You know, the president on Sunday night actually said these layoffs were underway, but so far we have not heard of any layoffs since October 1 that are related to the shutdown.

The U.S.

Patent and Trademark Office did announce some layoffs, but that agency is funded by fees, not by annual congressional appropriations.

And so we really don't know when these layoffs might be coming.

Labor unions representing federal employees have sued, saying these threats of layoffs are an abuse of power.

But to date, we just have not seen any announcements of mass layoffs so far.

Yeah, and the White House actually walked back to the president saying he was just referring to the furloughs.

It's fascinating.

Stephen, you've been following this too.

Yeah, there isn't really any evidence that layoffs are going to come.

President Trump cannot order layoffs.

Russell Vogt, the head of the Office of Management and Budget, cannot order layoffs.

These are things that have to be decided on by agency heads within each agency level.

There's a procedure for the reduction and force process that has to take place.

There has to be a certain amount of time and notice in competitive areas and a lot of paperwork.

It's not something that can just be done at the drop of the hat.

It's also important to look at the context of the entire Trump administration so far.

There have been threats of budget cuts and threats of mass layoffs and other changes to the way the federal government works that have taken effect since Trump took office in January.

And so at this point, eight months, nine months into his second term, there really isn't much left that hasn't already happened.

You've already had agencies enact reductions in force and go to the courts.

And the courts say these can't happen, these can happen.

And so there's really nothing to suggest that agencies who have already been cutting and already been trying layoffs have any more left in the tank.

So it's not like the government shutdown came out of nowhere and then all of a sudden we're left wondering, oh, what's going to happen where?

Yeah, in fact, in response to an executive order that the president issued back in February and instructions shortly thereafter from Office of Management and Budget, from the Office of Personal Management, agencies actually came up with these plans about how to reorganize, how to lay off massive numbers of people.

Most of them did not act on those plans.

Those plans probably still exist in some form.

So it's possible we could see some of that come to fruition now.

Yeah, I think it's important to note, though, that just because there's a government shutdown doesn't mean that suddenly Russell Vogt gets magical new superpowers necessarily.

I talked to a former head of the Office of Management and Budget from the Biden administration who said, no, there are no new special powers you get.

Right.

That said, this administration has shown repeatedly that they will act first and ask permission later.

And in many cases, they have gotten some level of permission from the Supreme Court.

We could certainly see all of this back at the Supreme Court again in the coming months.

That's right.

And Tam, this is one reason why I've heard from some federal workers who have taken a really defiant view.

Even before the shutdown, they said, you know, Democrats should not be scared and bullied into a deal that they don't want.

And, you know, I talked to one federal worker, Jenna Norton.

She's a program director at the National Institutes of Health.

And she actually spoke out as part of this group.

They held a press conference outside the Capitol on the Monday before the shutdown, urging lawmakers basically to not cave here's what she said as a federal worker i am here to tell you that every awful thing that would happen in a shutdown shuttering programs that americans rely on damaging our economy firing federal workers all of this is already happening you know this is fascinating andrea because it's so different from other shutdowns where federal workers they wanted the government reopened.

And this time, at least some of the ones who are speaking out are saying, keep going, fight on.

Yeah, I think that they see that this is a moment for Congress to stand up.

And with the Supreme Court largely siding with the administration, they feel like Congress is their only hope to get some sort of halt to the cuts that this administration has been making to the federal workforce and to programs.

So, Stephen, Congress does play a role here, obviously, in funding the government and setting appropriations.

They appear to be at something of a stalemate.

Where's the off-ramp here from the government shutdown?

Well, the off-ramp is somewhere in the future.

We don't know where it is yet.

The Democrats and the Senate are sticking to their posture that there needs to be some level of negotiation around extending Affordable Care Act subsidies that would prevent health care costs rising for millions of Americans.

There is also some sidebar conversations happening about trying to limit the power of Russell Vogt, the head of Office of Management and Budget, from going back and undoing any sort of funding agreements.

That's because the White House has put forth this multi-pronged effort on multiple fronts to try to put pressure on Democrats to drop their negotiations and just agree to what the Republicans want.

They have done things including freeze federal grants for transportation in Chicago and New York.

They have touted billions of dollars in supposed grant cancellations from the Department of Energy in states where President Trump lost the election in 2024.

There has been this threat of mass layoffs happening.

And so it is almost a full court press from the White House to try to pick all of these different things to get Democrats to budge.

But so far, the layoffs haven't happened yet.

The grant cancellations are maybe just hiatuses and pauses at some points.

There's not really a lot happening there.

The work is still continuing.

There's other funding sources.

And so there hasn't really been anything yet to push the button to try to get Democrats to change their position.

There's a new question today about whether these people who are furloughed or working without pay, whether the federal workers will be made whole when this is all over.

Stephen, what's going on there?

Well, it is a question that wasn't really a question until the White House put it forth.

There is a draft memo from the White House Office of Management and Budget that was confirmed by a senior White House official not authorized to discuss it.

This draft says that a 2019 law that was signed by President Trump to automatically pay federal workers who are furloughed and who have to work without pay during a government shutdown.

This memo suggests that the furloughed people maybe don't get automatic pay.

And there's not really a whole lot of legal grounding behind that so far.

The law appears to explicitly state that after the shutdown ends, all federal workers will get paid, but it is being floated by the White House and mentioned as a way to potentially, again, turn the screws to say, hey, Democrats, look at all of these people that are furloughed.

They might not get paid because of you.

You wouldn't want them to miss a paycheck.

But it's just another example of the way the White House is trying to politically message what is so far a not popular decision to keep the government shut down.

And it does appear that the Office of Management and Budget has updated its FAQ about the shutdown.

The version they put out last week said that this 2019 law that Stephen mentioned provides that federal workers who are furloughed and those who are working without pay will be paid retroactively after the shutdown ends and the government reopens.

And in a new version of this same FAQ, that language has been shortened and it just says that accepted employees, those who are working without pay, are entitled to receive back pay.

It does not mention furloughed employees anymore.

I also heard from a federal employee this morning who called it a scare tactic.

And Stephen, you talked about public opinion that the shutdown is not popular.

According to an NPR PBS News Marist poll that we put out last week, the polling was done before the shutdown happened.

But at the time, more people were blaming Republicans for the shutdown than blaming Democrats.

It's because in part Republicans control the White House, they control the House, they control the Senate, they control a lot of the messaging and narrative around what is going on in the government.

And so when the government shuts down, there are six or seven Democrats needed on paper in the Senate to reopen the government.

But it's the other Republicans and the Republican Party as a whole that voters so far say share more of the blame for this shutdown situation.

But we're seven days in out of who knows how many.

And so we're going to...

going to have to see if public opinion shifts.

All right, let's leave it there for today.

Thank you for being with us, Andrea.

Hey, thanks for having me.

I'm Tamara Keith.

I cover the White House.

And I'm Stephen Fowler.

I cover politics.

And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.

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