Author: Tom McCarthy / Source: the Guardian
Even as he announced an end to the longest government shutdown in US history, Donald Trump warned that a new shutdown could begin in just three weeks “if we don’t get a fair deal from Congress”.
That threat meant that clouds of uncertainty still remain in place for hundreds of thousands of government workers and unknown others whose lives were interrupted or derailed by a shutdown precipitated and prolonged by the president’s demand for a border wall, which he redoubled on Friday.
From the National Park Service to Nasa, the Coast Guard to border patrol, the Internal Revenue Service to the Transportation Security Administration – federal agencies are now filled with workers with damaged credit ratings, missed mortgage payments, new debts and, especially, new doubts about their basic job security and the future.
“I have the luxury that friends have loaned me one paycheck,” said Leisyka Parrott, 47, a furloughed employee with the Bureau of Land Management who is paying off a car loan. “The thing is when you get back pay, all the fees that you incur by missing payments – you don’t get paid back for those. If you are late for a payment and have a $25 fee, the government doesn’t pay for that.”
Trump presented his announcement on Friday as a return to business as usual for federal employees. “I will make sure that all employees receive their back pay very quickly – or as soon as possible,” Trump said. “It’ll happen fast.”
But even if the president makes good on his word, a quick return to normalcy was not likely for many federal employees, and especially for government contractors not entitled to back pay, union representatives warned.
“There’s all kinds of issues with raising families, just buying gasoline,” said Franco DiCroce, a US army corps of engineers employee speaking in his capacity as president of Local 98 of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers. “Most of these people, their salaries are not skyrocketing. They’re suffering even more, because some of them live check-to-check, so if they don’t have money coming in, they’re going to have difficulty meeting their needs, to even buy groceries.”
The number of federal employees filing for unemployment more than doubled in the second week of January to reach 25,000, up from 10,500 the week before, according to Labor Department figures. Last year the figure was 1,700.
The post End of shutdown: workers left with debts, bad credit and shattered trust appeared first on FeedBox.