Steny Hoyer likens federal employees who work during shutdown to slaves

I'm really tired of hearing all the calls for sympathy for Federal Workers. My wife is the HR manager for an environmental lab that does over half of its work on federal contracts. Of 56 employees 34 are completely laid off, another 18 (including the management team/owners) are reduced to 20 hours a week. My wife, the comptroller and two scientists whose work is exclusively on state projects are the only still full-time.

If this continues for 90 days, the business starts to default on its debts. Around 120 days it shutters its doors forever. If and when these people come back to work full-time, no one will be paying them lost wages. This is going on through out America. We need a higher level of outrage. Federal workers need to face the same potential outcome that private workers face. We do not need to be mad at one party or one official. We need to be mad at all of them. Measures that let the steam out of the problem temporarily, aren't useful. The legislature and the President need to know the electorate has had enough.

Ummm no they can quit. No one is saying they have to go to work. I never liked that I worked during the shutdown and others didn’t and we both got paid for the same amount of days. I felt those who were essential and worked should have received something such as comp time or partial comp time. Oh well it’s part of being a federal employee. Either put up with it every once and awhile or find a different job.

Depending on the contract and the company, the government contractors may or may not be adversely impacted. As a contractor I worked through several government shutdowns. As long as we had a valid contract when the shutdown started and the period of performance extended beyond the probable end of the shutdown, our company told employees to go to work. This was contingent on the expectation the government would pay their obligations for services rendered under the contract when the shutdown was over. In most cases the contracting officers affirmed that the government intended to pay its bills after the shutdown ended. As far as I know, they always paid. The only sticky point was "government supervision" of the contractor workforce. In general I was lucky because my contacting officer's technical representative, who supervised us, was military, so he came to work. The company was taking some risk, but they believed the good will was worth the risk.