WASHINGTON—Federal employees furloughed or forced to work without pay during the government’s
partial shutdown will likely get back pay after it reopens—but the thousands of workers for federal contractors most likely won’t. “It is a cowardly disgrace,” SEIU 32BJ President Héctor Figueroa, said in a statement. The property-services union represents more than 2,000 federal workers employed by private companies, including 370 security guards at the Smithsonian Institution’s dozen-odd museums in Washington, 50 at its museums in New York, and 70 custodians at the Department of Agriculture. Congress has appropriated back pay for federal workers after previous shutdowns, but contractors can’t bill the government for services they didn’t perform while it was closed, 32BJ spokesperson Frank Soults told Vox. “I’m a single mom… we aren’t a two-income family or anything,” Julie Burr, an administrative assistant for the Department of Transportation in Kansas City, told ABC Radio. She had to ask her landlord for an extension on paying her January rent, she added, because she hasn’t gotten paid for the last two weeks she worked—there was no one to process her time sheet—and taking a holiday-season job at Barnes and Noble didn’t bring in enough. Read more
