With morale waning, NC-based federal employees rally for an end to shutdown
Jeff Ryan, a senior scientist with the Environmental Protection Agency in Research Triangle Park, was supposed to be in New York on Friday taking air quality samples as part of his job monitoring the environment.
But instead, he was in downtown Raleigh, calling for an end to the shutdown as part of a demonstration by the American Federation of Government Employees, a union for federal workers. The demonstration came a few hours before President Donald Trump announced that a deal to temporarily reopen the government had been reached.
“We should actually be in the field this week doing emission testing. We were scheduled, and it took several months to plan,” said Ryan, who has been dipping into his savings to pay bills. The shutdown disrupted the EPA’s work and created a backlog, he added.
On top of that, there are a number of environmental samplings that are currently expiring at the EPA’s labs in RTP because no one is there to test them, said Ken Krebs, another EPA scientist.
“The test protocols put time limits on how long you can store the samples before they are analyzed, and there’s a whole set of samples that aren’t moving because there is no one to receive them,” Krebs said. “So a whole lot of samples are going to have to be negated and that is going to be an added expense.”
The federal government has been shut down for 35 days, the longest time in U.S. history. Many federal workers haven’t been paid since before Christmas, with some missing their second paycheck on Friday.
On Friday afternoon, Trump said he agreed to a deal that would temporarily reopen the federal government for three weeks while negotiations continue about the security of the U.S. border with Mexico. The deal still needs to pass through Congress.
In total, an estimated 7,800 people in the federal workforce in North Carolina are affected by the shutdown caused by the budget impasse over Trump’s proposed border wall, The Washington Post reported last week. It has affected a wide range of employees in North Carolina, from Environmental Protection Agency workers to correctional officers at a prison complex in Butner. Most will get back pay at some point, once the government has reopened, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t bills to pay this week.
Robert Gay is one of those correction officers at the federal prison in Butner. He has been working through the shutdown — because he is considered an essential worker — but hasn’t been paid, a fact that is compounded because his wife is also a federal worker.
“It is very stressful cause you don’t know when your next paycheck is coming in and you still got bills that got to be paid — a mortgage, your car, water bill, light bill, your kids got to eat — it’s very hard,” Gay said. “I’m bridging the gap with my savings, but that is going to dry up pretty soon.”
Gay added that even if he wanted to find another job, it’s not like he has time to search for one and also keep working at the Butner prison.
As the shutdown has dragged on, morale has declined among the workers at the Butner prison, said Andrea Bernard, another worker from there that was at the demonstration.
Gay noted that workers received a short boost in morale Thursday when a local food bank came by to offer workers meals. But that was short-lived, he said.
Similarly, morale is low at the EPA, Krebs said, though it had been dropping even before the shutdown.
“Morale has already been pretty depressed because federal workers have gone several years without pay increases and there is always the threat of cuts happening and the budget has been flat,” Krebs said. “Particularly with the contractors — we lost (an analytical chemistry) contractor just before Christmas because of the uncertainty of his position. He just didn’t want to deal with that. In this economy, he was able to find another job ... and I am concerned about the fallout with our other contractors here.”
The small crowd of around 30 federal workers and union activists gathered in front of the Terry Sanford Federal Building in downtown Raleigh to chant and tell reporters about the plight of workers.
“We just want to be heard and taken seriously, so that (politicians) know this is a reality and not a small thing that is happening to us,” Bernard said.
Patrick McHugh, a senior policy analyst at the left-leaning North Carolina Budget and Tax Center, warned those gathered that if the shutdown continued it could have dire impacts for many in the state.
“Communities that are still trying to recover from the hurricane last year aren’t getting the funds that they desperately need to rebuild their homes,” McHugh said. “Shelters for victims of domestic violence are in danger of closing.”
Sarah Whitehill, whose husband is a federal employee, brought her 15-month-old son to the demonstration Friday
“We are a one-income family, which means right now we are a no-income family,” she said. “We have been lucky enough to have savings ... but it is very tense, it is very stressful, and honestly, it is scary not knowing and the instability.”
This story was originally published January 25, 2019 at 2:47 PM.
