Shutdown Deal: Federal Workers Say No, Not This Way

Senate Democrats had some leverage, but they dropped the crowbar. Seven Democratic senators and an independent caved, spurring a Democratic deal with the Trump administration to end the 41-day government shutdown. It requires 60 Senate votes, with a preliminary vote expected today.

The Democrats had been refusing to approve the funding bill until Republicans restored health care funding. But the deal only extracted the promise of a floor vote in December on extending Affordable Care Act tax credits. There is no guarantee that any funding will be restored.

That means the dire cuts to the Affordable Care Act, Medicare, and Medicaid will continue, and so will Trump’s ability to override congressional spending decisions to slash vital services.

An estimated 50,000 Americans will die for lack of health care each year if the cuts go through, and 300 rural hospitals will close.

YOU DO NOT SPEAK FOR US

Even though paychecks will restart for federal workers, many are very angry at the outcome.

“Six weeks of hardship for federal workers as well as hungry families and the traveling public, and all Congress could offer was a promise to talk later,” said Ellen Mei, president of Treasury Employees (NTEU) Chapter 255 at the Food Nutrition Service (SNAP). (Mei and other federal workers quoted here are speaking in a personal or union capacity.)

The administration used the shutdown to halt SNAP benefits to 42 million people, even though a court ordered emergency funds to be used.

Forced to work for weeks with no pay, a shortage of air traffic controllers (NATCA members) and transportation security officers (members of the Government Employees, AFGE) was clogging airports nationwide, with the Federal Aviation Administration ordering airlines to cancel up to 10 percent of flights.

Hundreds of AFGE members were furious when their president Everett Kelley seemed to side with Republicans last week in demanding that the government reopen unconditionally. “We share your concerns,” they wrote in an open letter, “but on this issue, you do not speak for us.”

Kelley’s statement “signals to the administration that they can continue to attack federal workers—by terrorizing us, worsening our working conditions, carrying out illegal RIFs [mass firings], etc.—with impunity,” the AFGE members wrote. “We urge you to push to end the shutdown not on terms that sell out working-class Americans but on terms that will preserve the critical lifelines our government provides.”

“While we appreciate we can get back to work for our communities, we will not celebrate a shutdown deal that sacrifices affordable health care and food for millions of families,” said April Goggans, President of NTEU Chapter 250, in a statement released by the Federal Unionists Network (FUN).

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Goggans’ local represents workers at the Administration for Children and Families, where staff has been cut in half, and five of 10 regional child welfare offices have been closed. They administer child abuse prevention, Head Start childcare, and foster care programs.

FUN, a cross-union organizing project, has been arguing that not only did health care funding need to be restored, Congress also needed to seize back the power to determine spending. Trump has unilaterally cut budgets and eliminated programs with no response from Congress, which is supposed to determine spending.

While courts have declared the administration’s actions illegal, the cuts have proceeded while cases make their way to the Supreme Court.

ILLEGAL FIRINGS AT ISSUE

The deal reportedly provides temporary protections against additional illegal mass firings until the end of January. It also reverses illegal firings during the shutdown. But Paul Osadebe, an AFGE steward at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, said the Trump administration has already forced out 300,000 federal workers.

Many agencies already had to hire back workers after cuts by the Department of Government Efficiency caused basic operations to falter. But in other cases, programs have been slashed to the point of extinction, including USAID, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, and the Department of Education.

The congressional deadlock meant many federal workers were ordered not to work over the last month, but FUN members said that Trump administration moves have amounted to a federal shutdown since January.

“This deal does nothing to restore the jobs killed during this purge—let alone fix the harm it has caused to essential services,” said Osadebe. “[It] does nothing to prevent the ongoing destruction of public services and jobs.” Osadebe was fired for whistleblowing at HUD and is currently fighting his dismissal.

Federal workers have gone without paychecks since the shutdown began, and now it seems to have been for nothing. “Federal workers have made sacrifices during this shutdown to defend health care and public services... Meanwhile, Congress got paid the whole time and still sold us out,” said Monica Gorman, an IFPTE Local 29 steward at NASA and a FUN organizer.

Workers will get back-pay according to the deal, but that should never have been an issue, said Gorman, since it was already the law. It shows that “Congress knows this Administration’s lawlessness,” she said.

FUN is organizing a nationwide “Week of Service and Action,” November 16-22, saying federal workers “will continue to fight against any effort that dismantles the very programs they are sworn to protect.” Contact FUN here.