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A new message to federal workers sent from several government agencies suggests that the Trump administration may not give back pay to furloughed workers once the shutdown ends, violating a statute that President Donald Trump himself signed into law six years ago.
The message doesn’t explicitly state that furloughed employees — those who have been told to stop working during the federal shutdown but will return to work once it ends — will not receive missed paychecks. However, it omits them when discussing how excepted employees (those currently working without pay) will be compensated.
“Once an appropriation or continuing resolution is enacted, excepted employees are entitled to receive payment,” a sentence in the message reads.
The message does not offer furloughed employees the same assurance.
A similar message was sent to employees in October. According to federal workers from several agencies who received that message, it did not include the sentence regarding how excepted employees in particular would be paid.
Federal law “provides that employees shall be paid for the period of the lapse in appropriations ends,” the message sent to employees in early October stated. “As soon as possible after the appropriations lapse ends, you will be paid for the period of the lapse in appropriations.”
That part of October’s message, which doesn’t differentiate between furloughed and excepted employees, was not included in November’s message.
At least 670,000 federal staffers have been furloughed since the start of the shutdown, which began on October 1. As of Tuesday night, the shutdown is now the longest in U.S. history, with no compromise between Democrats and Republicans on a continuing resolution in sight.
The message to federal employees is the latest indication that furloughed workers will not get back pay. Earlier in October, a leaked draft of a White House memo argued that workers may not receive those payments if they’re not specifically included in a continuing resolution bill. Republican leaders, like Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, have continually pressed Democrats in the Senate to pass a continuing resolution that was passed in the House before the shutdown began, which would mean those payments wouldn’t be included in the legislation’s language.
Failing to pay workers their missed wages would be a violation of the Government Employee Fair Treatment Act (GEFTA), which states that furloughed workers “shall be paid” compensation that would have been owed to them had the shutdown not occurred.
While the Trump White House is signaling that it may attempt to withhold these payments, it was Trump himself who signed GEFTA into law, in 2019 during the last government shutdown.
“The law is the law. That legislation was signed into law — and there is nothing this administration can do to change that,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland) said in reaction to reporting on the draft memo in early October.
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