WASHINGTON (AP) — With each passing day of the government shutdown, hundreds of thousands of federal workers furloughed or working without pay are facing growing financial strain. And now they face novel uncertainty with the Trump administration’s promised layoffs.
Little progress has been made in ending the shutdown, which is entering its third week. Republicans and Democrats are confident their messages will resonate with voters. The fate of federal workers is one of several pressure points that could ultimately push the sides toward agreeing to resolve the standoff.
“Luckily I was able to pay the rent this month,” said Peter Farruggia, a furloughed federal employee. “But I’m definitely going to have bills that go unpaid this month, and I really don’t have many options.”
For many federal workers who have experienced standoffs in the past — including during President Donald Trump’s first term — the shutdown is a familiar feeling, but this time the stakes are higher. The Republican White House is using federal workers’ jobs to pressure Democrats to soften their demands.
The shutdown began Oct. 1 after Democrats rejected a short-term funding measure and demanded that the bill include an expansion of federal subsidies for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act. Trump and other Republican leaders have said the government must reopen before negotiating with Democrats over health subsidies.
The Trump administration is launching a wave of layoffs
Farruggia is the local director of the American Federation of Government Employees and represents employees at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an agency that faced a wave of layoffs over the weekend. Like 8,000 other CDC employees furloughed by the agency, he was already living paycheck to paycheck, and the partial pay that arrived Friday was his last until the government comes back online.
With the agency’s leadership in turmoil and still reeling from a shooting, the closure and novel layoffs mean “people are scared, nervous, anxious, but also just upset,” Farruggia said.
After Russ Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, said on social media last week that the “RIFs have begun,” referring to troop reduction plans aimed at shrinking the federal government, Vice President JD Vance stepped up his threat on Sunday, saying, “The longer this goes on, the deeper the cuts will be.”
Layoffs have begun in all federal agencies. The unions have already filed a lawsuit to stop the move by Trump’s budget office.
In a court filing Friday, the Office of Management and Budget said well over 4,000 federal employees across eight departments and agencies would be laid off in connection with the shutdown.
Jessica Sweet, a social security claims specialist in Albany, New York, and union representative for AFGE Local 3343 in New York, said, “I myself have a backup plan” in case she is laid off during the shutdown, “but I know most people don’t.”
She says the Social Security Administration is already so short-staffed due to layoffs earlier this year initiated by the Ministry of Government Efficiency that she doesn’t fear mass layoffs during the shutdown.
“The one thing this government has taught me is that nothing is ever safe, even if it is enshrined in law,” she said.
After receiving a partial payment of her last paycheck, Sweet began contacting her local utility companies to ask them not to charge her tardy fees because “my bills don’t wait for me to eventually get paid.”
The shutdown drags on and frustration grows
For some federal workers, this isn’t the first shutdown — the last one, during Trump’s first term in 2019, lasted a record 34 days. But this time, federal employees are being used more directly as leverage in the political battle over government funding.
The Republican administration warned last week that there would be no guaranteed payback for federal workers during a shutdown, a reversal of long-standing policies that affect about 750,000 furloughed employees, according to a White House memo. The move, which Trump later backed away from, was widely seen as a tactic of violence.
Adam Pelletier, a field auditor for the National Labor Relations Board, whose agency furloughed nearly its entire workforce on Oct. 1, down from about 1,100 to fewer than a dozen, said he wouldn’t mind seeing the shutdown continue if it meant meaningful progress in enforcing health protections for Americans across the country – a key demand from Democrats to end the stalemate.
Pelletier, a union leader with NLRB Local 3, said: “Right now there’s nothing being investigated at the NLRB. There are no union elections or decertification elections. Basically nothing is happening.”
As for the financial burden on workers, he said workers can’t even find alternative employment to get through the shutdown because “the ethics office that would approve these requests is currently unstaffed.”
Workers used as “political pawns”.
Doreen Greenwald, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents workers at dozens of federal agencies, said several union members have been fired since Friday. According to the information, the Ministry of Finance would lose 1,446 employees.
Greenwald said it was unfortunate that the Trump administration “used federal employees as political pawns by furloughing them all and proposing to fire them to gain leverage in a political hate game.”
“This isn’t about one party or the other. This is about real people,” said Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees.
“The correctional officer who worries about his next paycheck. The TSA officer who still shows up to work because he or she loves his or her country even though he or she isn’t getting paid. No American should ever have to choose between serving their country and feeding their family,” Kelley said.
Kelley and other major federal union leaders rallied outside the Capitol last week and called on congressional leaders to find a solution and put “people above politics.” The event became emotional at times as union leaders outlined the difficulties their members faced and the challenges grew daily.
Randy Erwin, president of the National Federation of Federal Employees, which represents 110,000 workers nationwide, called on both sides of Congress to find a solution. He said Trump appeared to be aiming to “demean, intimidate and antagonize hard-working federal employees.”
Chris Bartley, policy program coordinator for the International Association of Fire Fighters, said thousands of firefighters showed up to work without pay out of dedication, but stressed it could have broader consequences.
“Families have no income,” Bartley said. “Morale and retention suffer. Public safety is at risk.”
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Bedayn reported from Denver and Riddle reported from Montgomery, Alabama.
