Federal Workers Are Social Services’ First Line of Defense Suggested
The Trump administration’s Government Shutdown is meant to immiserate the workers overseeing America’s welfare state.
Maximillian Alvarez
Maximilian Alvarez: We are recording this episode on Monday, October 20, and the federal government has been shut down for nearly three weeks at this point– although, frankly, the term shutdown can be misleading, because there’s still a lot happening in the federal government right now.
As the New York Times reports,
President Trump has repurposed money to fund military salaries during the government shutdown. He has pledged to find ways to make sure many in law enforcement get paid. He has used the fiscal impasse to halt funding to Democratic jurisdictions, and is trying to lay off thousands of federal workers. Government shutdowns are usually resolved only after the pain they inflict on everyday Americans forces elected officials in Washington to come to an agreement. But as the shutdown nears a fourth week, Mr. Trump’s actions have instead reduced the pressure for an immediate resolution and pushed his political opponents to further dig in.
All of this is going on while at least 700,000 federal employees have been furloughed, with nearly as many continuing to work without pay. Today, we are speaking with three of those furloughed federal workers.
First, we are joined by Adam, who works in recreation for the US Forest Service, managing hiking, biking and equestrian trails in central Idaho. He’s also local president of the National Federation of Federal Employees Local 1753, and an organizer with the Federal Unionist Network.
We are also joined by Ellen, who works in SNAP oversight and administration at the USDA Food and Nutrition Service. Ellen is the chapter president of the National Treasury Employees Union Local 255, representing FNS employees at the Northeast Regional Office. She is an organizer with the Federal Unionist Network in Boston.
Lastly, but not least, we are joined by April, who is National Treasury Employees Union chapter 250 President, and who also works in the office of Head Start at the Administration for Children and Families headquarters in Washington, DC.
Adam: Thanks, Max. I work at Recreation for the US Forest Service. I run a trail program. We’ve maintained about 600 miles of hiking and biking trails.
It has already been a strange summer. We usually have about 10 permanent folks, plus seasonal employees that can help us maintain trails, maintain trail heads, bathrooms, campsites, all that good stuff.
Since the beginning of the year, we’re now down to just three of us because we lost so many folks before the furloughs even started happening.
We lost folks due to the deferred resignation program. People were stepping away from the agency just because of the toxic workplace that existed in February — and is ongoing. On the day the shutdown started I was told that I would be furloughed.
So there’s plenty of things that won’t be happening. There’s definitely no trails getting maintained by the agency right now, at least any of the places I work.
Since the shutdown started I’ve definitely committed more deeply with my sudden free time to work within our union – within our local – trying to make sure that people who are still working are getting connected with resources, and that they’re still getting informed on their rights. And for the people who have been furloughed, who are not getting paid, trying to keep people together, make sure that they know that they can turn to their fellow members for support, and know where to look for other resources that they might need.
Ellen: I work at the Food and Nutrition Service. We do a lot of things at FNS. We administer the sixteen nutritional assistance programs that the federal government provides. So everything from SNAP to WIC to the school lunch program.
I specifically worked in SNAP and made sure that the states had all their questions answered on how to actually give out SNAP benefits, how to determine if people were eligible. There’s a whole maze of regulations and rules that people have to follow. So our job was to kind of parse that for the states, make it a little easier for them.
It’s hard to not be doing that anymore. Especially when the program changed so much in July. There will be real penalties for them, starting next year. If they don’t get things right, they will have to start paying for a portion of SNAP benefits. Their administrative costs are going to go up this time next year. We were fielding a lot of questions on, “how do we pay for this?” Or “what are the kind of essential rules and regulations that we have to follow?” right up until October 1st. Now we’re gone.
We work in human food assistance programs, so we’re always thinking about the recipients at the end of the day. We’re concerned not just about how we can get paychecks and how we can get food on the table, but how we can keep helping the people. So I know a lot of my members are volunteering at food banks right now with the time that we have left over left in our day, and trying to kind of help out and plug into their local communities where we can.
April: This is always so heavy to listen to. As part of Head Start, I, in addition to being chapter president, work in policy. So some of the things I was working on before, of course, are everything that this administration hates. In fact, they were the first things to go.
I worked on the Office of Head Start’s Equity Plan. I helped with fielding all of the public comments for new Head Start regulations. I managed the process of reports to Congress – all of the ones that are statutorily required.
A lot of the same things are happening across the government, but in HHS we just have to constantly wait to see what the impact is and constantly check in with each other. Our programs are so interlinked. For instance, we’re watching what happens with SNAP, because we know that our kids and families are also connected to that program. The same with TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) and the employees I represent who work in LIHEAP (the Low Income Heating Energy Assistance Program).
I’d also say being here in DC, a lot of my members are black folks. Many of them are black women who have just been very much more impacted when it comes to the shutdown. We [black women] have already been leaving and record numbers. It’s the biggest exodus from the government in our history.
These were some of the first stable jobs that black folks had. Unions were essential to making that happen. Seeing this exodus of folks who are generations of people who have worked in the government and were staples in their communities.
DC has one of the highest populations of both poverty and black folks. We are welcoming a lot of migrant families and community members. Our program specialists have gotten hit the hardest — those are the people who do all the grants. But they also live over here. So being in a new income bracket means having new needs, especially for kids. There’s just this interconnectedness with our lives as employees. Its just the not knowing.
I just want to say this is an abusive relationship with the government. So there’s just this snowball everywhere. There’s never a time when people are just talking about programs or just talking about their lives. They’re just so intertwined.
Alvarez: I wanted to ask if we could just flesh that out a bit more. If we could get a worker’s eye view from your side of the federal workforce. Could you tell listeners a bit more about what it’s actually been like to work in the federal government over the past year – leading up to the inauguration until now?
Ellen: They’re trying to make us so miserable. In my workplace, at the very beginning, we were all hopeful. We were like, “we can stick it out as long as we stick together as an agency and as an office. We’ll make it out of these next four years together. We can put up with anything.”
And then they fired the probationary employees. They fired the people I worked with for the past year, maybe two years for some people because their probationary periods were a little bit longer. Then it was like, “well, do we still want to go on?” Because our bosses don’t want us to do the same amount of work with fewer people. And who knew if they were going to come back. They’re trying to downsize the federal government, right?
Russel Vought wants to not only traumatize the federal workforce, but he wants to shrink it so that we can’t do the work that we are charged with doing.
Solidarity has never been stronger. The feeling of support amongst each other has never been better. There’s just a lot of dark humor around. It’s whatever makes us feel better at the end of the day, whatever gets a little laugh out of everybody.
This episode of the Working People Podcast was originally published on Oct. 22.
Maximillian Alvarez is editor-in-chief at the Real News Network and host of the podcast Working People, available at InTheseTimes.com. He is also the author of The Work of Living: Working People Talk About Their Lives and the Year the World Broke.
