Lilly Simmons was among the roughly 40% of employees in U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Boston office who was furloughed without pay during the federal government shutdown.
Simmons, who is president of the local union representing EPA workers in New England, says that was a financial strain for her and her colleagues.
“I will be looking forward to getting that money, that back pay, and being able to pay back my in-laws for the money they loaned us for the mortgage and everything without our checks,” she said. “And for other people ... they’re not in as good a situation. Maybe they had to take loans from the bank, or maybe they had take up gig work.”
Some EPA workers deemed essential were paid to continue working, while others worked without pay.
It’s not clear, Simmons said, if contract workers will see any pay from the shutdown period.
“And a lot of the work that we do relies on contractors,” she said.
For federal workers like Simmons, the end of the shutdown is a relief — and not just for personal finance reasons.
“Folks are glad to be back doing the work that they love and the work that helps protect the public and human health,” she said. “Like, that’s what we want to do.”
At the same time though, she said, there’s some trepidation.
“Because it’s likely to happen again. And hopefully it won’t be this bad,” she said.
With the longest shutdown ever coming to a close, Simmons and hundreds of thousands of other federal workers are left feeling that their livelihoods served as political pawns in the fight between recalcitrant lawmakers in Washington and are asking themselves whether the battle was worth their sacrifices.
“It’s very frustrating to go through something like this,” said Jessica Sweet, who is a union steward of AFGE Local 3343 in New York. “It shakes the foundation of trust that we all place in our agencies and in the federal government to do the right thing.”
Earlier this week, U.S. Senator Ed Markey lamented that the end of the shutdown did not come with the extension of Affordable Care Act tax credits that Democrats had sought.
“While I am glad that workers will finally be able to get back to work and receive their paychecks and Americans will soon receive the benefits they rely on, Trump and Republicans have caused irreparable damage,” Markey said in a statement.
“Right now, families in Massachusetts and across the country are sitting down at the kitchen table facing the reality that the cost of their health care coverage will double or even triple next year if Congress does not act — yet another concern for families on top of skyrocketing housing costs, grocery receipts, and electricity bills,” the senator said.
The shutdown began on Oct. 1 after Democrats rejected a short-term funding fix and demanded that the bill include an extension of federal subsidies for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act. Its end emerged when eight Democratic-aligned senators agreed to a deal to fund the government with no extension of the expiring subsidies.
Federal workers deeply felt the impacts of the shutdown
The shutdown created a cascade of troubles for many Americans. Throughout the shutdown, at least 670,000 federal employees were furloughed, while about 730,000 others were working without pay, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center.
According to government data, over 25,000 federal civilian employees work in Massachusetts.
The plight of the federal workers was among several pressure points, along with flight disruptions and cuts to food aid, that in the end ratcheted up the pressure on lawmakers to come to an agreement to fund the government.
Throughout the six-week shutdown, officials in President Donald Trump’s administration repeatedly used the federal workers as leverage to try to push Democrats to relent on their health care demands. The Republican president signaled that workers going unpaid wouldn’t get back pay. He threatened and then followed through on firings in a federal workforce already reeling from layoffs earlier this year. A court then blocked the shutdown firings, adding to the uncertainty.
The deal that is bringing an end to the shutdown will reverse the dismissals that occurred since Oct. 1, while also ensuring back pay for furloughed federal workers the Trump administration had left in doubt. The bipartisan deal provides funding to reopen the government, including for SNAP food aid and other programs.
Ready to get back to work
Adam Pelletier, a National Labor Relations Board field examiner who was furloughed Oct. 1, said he is glad the compromise includes rehiring laid-off workers, but “the agreement that was reached almost feels like the Charlie Brown cartoon where Lucy holds the football and pulls it out from them.”
Pelletier, a union leader for NLRBU local 3, had financially prepared for the shutdown back in March when it became clear that a funding agreement between Democrats and Republicans likely would not be reached. He says the shutdown has made him feel “like a pawn” because federal workers had no say over their own fate.
“This has been the worst time in my 20 years to be a federal employee,” said Elizabeth McPeak, a furloughed IRS employee in Pittsburgh who is National Treasury Employees Union Chapter 34 first vice president. She said colleagues had to beg their landlords to hold off on collecting rent payments and relied on food banks during the shutdown.
“A month without pay,” McPeak said, “is a long time to go.”
