‘Using us as political pawns’: Federal workers reel from threats of termination and withholding of back pay | 2025 US Federal Government Shutdown
WWith no end to the federal government shutdown in sight, an estimated 750,000 workers remain on furlough. Hundreds of thousands more work without pay. They are “held hostage by a political dispute,” according to union leaders, as Republicans and Democrats remain deadlocked.
In the Oval Office on Tuesday, Donald Trump suggested that furloughed employees would not necessarily receive their back wages — despite a legal guarantee — leading to further concern throughout the federal workforce. The US President said: “There are some people who do not deserve to be taken care of, and we will take care of them in a different way.”
Meanwhile, the administration continues to threaten to fire large numbers of employees if Democrats adhere to their demands. “If this continues, it’s going to be big,” Trump told reporters. “And a lot of those jobs will never come back.”
On Friday, Russell Vought, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), announced on social media that layoffs had begun. Several federal agencies have begun announcing layoffs, but details have remained scant about how many workers will be affected.
After a tough year for the federal workforce, employees who spoke to the Guardian expressed growing concern about their pay and the future of their jobs.
“This is the third time I have been furloughed in my federal career,” said Priscilla Novak, a federal personnel researcher. “But this is the first time I’ve received threats to fire employees en masse. I’ve been checking my email every day to see if I’ve been fired yet.”
“Even before the shutdown, it was just one thing after another for us,” said Peter Farrugia, a certified staff member at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). “I think a lot of us expect the worst and hope for the best.”
“Not knowing when my next paycheck is going to get here is definitely very daunting,” added Farrugia, who is also chair of the executive committee of AFGE Local 2883, which represents workers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “But at least I paid rent this month, so that’s probably the most important thing. If I waste some of my other bills, it is what it is, and I don’t really have any other options to look at.”
“What I’m hearing is a lot of anxiety, confusion and chaos,” said Brent Barron, a U.S. Department of Labor employee who serves as president of the National Council of Fieldworkers, which represents workers at the department outside Washington, D.C. He claimed some employees don’t even know whether they’ve been furloughed or not, let alone “whether or not they’ll continue to have a job” for much longer.
“There are a lot of employees who can’t even afford to miss one check, let alone have this go on for weeks and weeks and weeks,” Barron said. About three-quarters of the Department of Labor has been furloughed. “All we want to do is do our job.”
The law Trump signed during his first term, the Fair Treatment of Government Employees Act, ensures that all federal employees will receive back pay retroactively once the government shutdown ends.
“It really baffles me that this administration can flaunt any law whatever it is and say it has no obligation to follow it,” Barron said. “This is a law passed by Congress in 2019 and signed by the president. We all know who the president was in 2019.”
Trump officials are now facing calls to make clear that the federal government will follow the law and ensure every employee receives paid leave.
“Given the clarity of the law, there is no room for management to back away from its commitment to pay furloughed workers,” labor unions and the Democracy Defenders Fund, a watchdog group, wrote to the Office of Management and Budget on Wednesday. “The administration’s statements appear to be a blatant attempt to inflict pain on innocent parties to gain an advantage in the closure.”
The Office of Management and Budget is headed by Vogt, the architect of the right-wing Project 2025 blueprint. In a Special speech in 2023Foote spoke of his desire to subject officials to a “shock” to reduce the capacity of the federal government. “When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work.”
As management continues to threaten mass layoffs, the possibility of further cuts beyond budget limits increases 300 thousand federal employees They are scheduled to be removed from the government by the end of this year through separation and attrition programmes, as has also been done commander by a federal judge to provide details about the status of any layoff plans, the agencies affected, and whether any federal employees have been recalled to work to implement the applicable cuts.
“The American people and the workers who run this country are being held hostage by a political dispute, by a petty political dispute that they had nothing to do with,” Greg Regan, president of the AFL-CIO’s transportation trade division, said during a news conference this week. “This is absolutely an act of revenge, and the only victims will be this country.
“We’ve all seen the reports every time we go through this stupid lockdown, and how much American taxpayers have lost. It’s a drain on our economy. It’s a drain on our safety. It’s a drain on the people who live here. So we need to put an end to this.”
“People can’t focus on their jobs.”
Nearly all TSA employees are being asked to work without pay during closures, in an effort to reduce the risk of disruptions at major travel hubs like airports.
The uncertainty was especially troubling for new, low-wage employees, according to Cameron Cochems, a top TSA official and vice president of AFGE Local 1127, which represents the department’s employees in Idaho.
Workers get anxious when they start losing paychecks, he said, adding that many of them have asked where to get low-interest loans to float them through missing paychecks.
“It’s as if there’s a train coming and you can hear its whistle, but every day it’s getting closer and closer to us,” Cochems told The Guardian. “Right now, we can barely hear the siren because we are still focused on our jobs, we are still focused on our mission, which is to protect the country’s transportation system to ensure freedom of movement for people involved in trade.
“But once the paycheck doesn’t come, I think the train whistle will go up in everyone’s mind, and it can get so loud that people can’t focus on their jobs because they’re focused on things like ‘The bank is calling me for the fifth time today,’ or ‘I don’t know how to pay for my daycare,’ and things like that.”
Cochems added that the threats made by Trump and his senior officials regarding the inability of federal employees to receive their back wages, led to increased anxiety and fears and “threw a lot more people for a vicious circle, especially people who are disadvantaged, single parents or living paycheck to paycheck.”
“It’s like they are deliberately using us as political pawns, and deliberately wanting to make our jobs and our lives precarious,” he said.
“Worse than morale are the future implications for how our government is run,” Novak added. “I believe a strong civil service that is not politically motivated is most effective in delivering modern services to our citizens. Furloughed workers want to get back to work. We need Congress to pass a budget.”
The White House and Office of Management and Budget did not respond to multiple requests for comment.