Dear Senator:
As we enter the thirty-eighth day of the federal government shutdown, federal workers, contractors, and military personnel continue to bear the brunt of its impact. We again urge you to support Senator Van Hollen’s True Shutdown Fairness Act to provide immediate and ongoing pay to these workers for the duration of this shutdown.
Most Americans live paycheck to paycheck. Federal workers across the country are no exception. While many of them still perform their duties without pay, daily expenses like rent, mortgages, gas, groceries, and other bills continue to add up. Furloughed and excepted workers alike have been forced, through no fault of their own, into taking drastic measures to make ends meet as they go yet another week without pay. Federal contractors and military personnel are facing the same pressures. The longest shutdown in history requires urgent action to get paychecks into workers’ hands.
The True Shutdown Fairness Act would provide immediate backpay and continued pay to all impacted federal workers, federal contractors, and military personnel while the shutdown persists. The legislation also undoes the Trump Administration’s illegal reductions-in-force (RIFs) and protects federal workers from further threats and layoffs as a result of a temporary shutdown. We strongly encourage you to support this important legislation and provide immediate relief to these workers.
Senator Ron Johnson has introduced a similar measure, S.3012, the Shutdown Fairness Act, which may get a vote in the Senate as soon as today. His bill is now amended to cover both excepted and furloughed employees. While the recent updates to the legislation have moved in the right direction, it lacks some important provisions, particularly the language from Senator Van Hollen’s bill that ensures relief to all impacted federal contractors as well as language that ensures federal workers are not subjected to reductions-in-force during this or any future shutdown. If the opportunity to amend the Johnson bill arises, we strongly urge you to do so. Amendments to ensure all affected workers are paid and federal workers are not subjected to permanent layoffs in a temporary shutdown should be noncontroversial.
Please support the Van Hollen bill and amendments that would ensure immediate backpay and ongoing pay for all impacted workers and protect against RIFs during the shutdown. And on top of these interim measures: please fund the government, fix the healthcare crisis, and put working people first.
Sincerely,
Jody Calemine
Director, Government Affairs