The Government Shutdown Has Been a Nightmare for Federal Employees Who Get Sick
As Donald Trump's government shutdown barrels through its fourth week, the president and his allies face an increasingly difficult task: coming up with reasons that a self-inflicted crisis preventing some 800,000 Americans from getting regular paychecks is actually in the nation's best interest. Last weekend, White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett analogized furloughs to free vacation time, arguing that those who receive backpay after the shutdown will be "better off" because it took place. He did not specify how they could apply the prospect of future receipt of backpay to currently due mortgage payments, or utility bills, or student loans, likely because he cannot conceive of such pressing obligations in the first place.
Hassett is right in the very narrow sense that non-essential personnel need not use paid leave days to take a vacation. (Since, you know, they temporarily have no job from which to take one.) But his rosy assessment glosses over the many hidden hardships imposed by the shutdown on federal workers, who, for whatever reason, need to take time off from work.
Furloughed employees not only go without pay during a shutdown; federal regulations prevent them from earning leave and sick leave while on "non-pay" status, too. And while Congress can provide for retroactive accrual when the government reopens—it did so in 2013—in the meantime, uncertainty over the shutdown's duration is starting to have an impact. For example, federal employees do not receive parental leave, which means that during normal periods of government operation, they take some combination of accumulated paid leave and sick leave when they have children. (They may take additional time under the Family Medical Leave Act, if they so choose, but that time is unpaid.)
Once furloughed, however, leave is frozen and employees are limited to whatever time they have on hand. In some instances, it might not be enough. One Customs and Border Patrol employee who is expecting her first child in a matter of weeks told GQ that she typically earns eight hours of paid leave and four hours of sick time every two weeks. She was out sick for an extended period recently, so her leave reserves are already low; now she sits at home knowing that every check she misses also means her "maternity leave" is shortened by a day and a half.
"I did my best to plan my pregnancy so that I would have the maximum amount of time at home with my baby," she says. "Every day, it feels like that time is being stolen from me."
If Congress provides for back leave, she might be able to take the time for which she originally planned. But that solution assumes the shutdown ends before her child is born. And if this thing drags on for "weeks or even months," as Trump has threatened—or if Congress doesn't act swiftly enough once it's over—she may have to decide between forgoing a paycheck under FMLA or cutting her maternity leave short and going back to work.
For "essential" employees—the ones required to work without pay, such as air-traffic controllers—falling ill during a shutdown presents a different set of problems. To discourage non-furloughed workers from staying home as part of a "sick-out" protest, the rules prohibit taking leave while the government is closed, which means that coming down with a bad cold has gone from a mild inconvenience to an HR nightmare. One USDA employee told me her office typically requires a doctor's note only if an absence lasts longer than three days. But now supervisors are cracking down. "Since there have been numerous stories about other agencies' employees calling out sick," she said, "we were told that if we call stating we can’t work due to illness, we have to get a doctor's note"—even for one day—or else risk being marked AWOL.
Getting sick, in other words, causes non-furloughed workers to bear an additional administrative burden that, but for the shutdown, would not exist. Do you suck it up and report for duty, hoping that you'll feel better and that you won't infect anyone else? Do you go to the time and expense of making a doctor's appointment, all to get a piece of paper confirming that, yes, you have bronchitis and need a few days to rest? And in an environment in which you know exercises of leave are viewed with suspicion, even if you can get a note, do you risk getting on the wrong person's nerves by doing so?
"I was sick yesterday, but I was forced to stay at work for fear of reprisal," a second USDA employee told me. "People need to know what's happening to us."
Healthy, non-furloughed personnel who are considering sick-out protests face more than just logistical hurdles to participation. Civil disobedience is costly, and just like anyone else, they may have no choice but to save their leave for periods when, you know, they or their loved ones are actually sick. "That time is earned and shouldn't have to be used as a bargaining chip to get politicians and citizens to care about 800,000 people," said the Customs employee. Given their "essential" designation, they know the impact of their absence, well-intentioned though it may be, could be significant. "No one wants to see real harm done to our country because the people inspecting packages stopped showing up," she said. With an increasingly fragile safety net beneath them, and without any means of hastening the shutdown's end that do not put American lives and their own careers in danger, all they can do is work and wait.
