Maybe in Israel, but not in the US. Here, people are paid for their work. There is no Federal legal requirement that an employee be paid for even a single day that he or she doesn’t work. In most of the US , I am perfectly free to close my small business to take a week’s vacation and not pay my employees for the week they didn’t work( whether it’s a good idea or not is a separate issue)
It is more complicated than that. Not only are they not given work to do, they are not *allowed *to come to work. They are not allowed to work from home. They are not allowed to check email. I work for a federal contractor and we could not even discuss the most minor aspect of contract administration with our Contracting Officer during the shutdown.
Why *should *they be paid if their employer can’t make payroll? Commercial companies do this all the time.
I have been through two U.S. Government shutdowns and I have not seen this happen and I don’t think it would be legal.
The U.S. Government has on many occasions furloughedworkers temporarily as a cost-cutting measure. This is like a temporary layoff. There is no reason the same thing couldn’t be done for a shutdown.
Ever had a job flipping burgers? Those employees routinely find that showing up for work on time doesn’t guarantee any work. They are routinely sent home early, or just told to go home immediately, if they aren’t needed that day. The reverse however is not true-if they don’t show up on time they are fired. Such is the life of a low wage earner.
All this is true, but I will point out a couple of things-in general when the Government shuts down contractors don’t. The legal authority to work and bill the Government is unaffected by the shutdown. Paying the company invoices is often temporarily suspended, but the invoice will eventually get paid. As pointed out up thread it greatly depends on the details of the work. A person assembling widgets for a Government contract in a private factory will continue to work during a shutdown, an office worker assigned to a Government building that is closed during a shutdown can’t work and may very well not get paid.
Another wrinkle, if the company was smart during the contract negotiations, they will put into their Government contract a clause saying that the Government will pay for employees to be treated just like Government workers-if the Government worker gets back pay, the company can give the same pay to their furloughed worker and get reimbursed. But the smart company has to ask for that clause, it isn’t automatic. Government contract officers are pretty easy about granting the request (from what I have heard), after all they suffer from the furlough and don’t like it or agree with it any more than anyone else. And it doesn’t raise the cost to the Government-it only means that furloughs don’t save money. Which from the point of view of the Government worker is a good thing.
Everyone so far has run with the OP’s premise that Govt. employees are normally paid for work not performed during a shutdown…And arguing the pros/cons, rights/wrongs, legality’s, etc. of such actions…
I wonder: When and where (cite?) was it established that this practice is the norm, much less, has even occurred?
It is possible that the premise is a red herring.
[quote=“CookingWithGas, post:22, topic:790047”]
I have been through two U.S. Government shutdowns and I have not seen this happen and I don’t think it would be legal.
QUOTE]
When I worked for the state of California in the 70s and the state budget was not passed on time. We were told if we did not show up for work it would be considered job abandonment and we would have to reapply for our positions after the hiring freeze was over. And there was no guarantee that we would be rehired. We would be paid by warrants. That is a promissory note. The notes would be made good after the budget was passed. They were not sure if the banks would accept the warrants, or if they would not give full value for the warrants. or would the banks accept the warrants and hold them until the budget was passed. We never had to finds out which way it was going to go because the budget was passed before the end of the month and we received our pay checks.
After I left the state it happened several more times when the budget was not passed on time.
It should be illegal but unless they have closed that avenue it could happen again.
[quote=“Snnipe_70E, post:26, topic:790047”]
Under this circumstance, if one showed up for work, was one expected to perform the duties of their job description to the best of their ability?
Because politicians understand that it wouldn’t look good to disrupt a bunch of people’s finances over some political spat.
36+ year employee here. We get paid during shutdowns because they are of short duration - our old politicians can’t hold their positions that long, senior citizen call about their SS checks, many pols have large govt. constituencies and contractor laden districts. It’s a myth that nobody likes big government. When it stops, the phones light up. As pointed out above; screwing up time cards, pay dates, unemployment, work schedules for hundreds of thousands of employees and close to a million service members vs. a couple of days pay is not cost efficient.
In my case, I was a semi-essential worker based on my clearance level and programs I was read in on for specific purposes. I got the day(s) off but was obligated to stay around [closest golf course]. All the other employees were also told to stay in the area and be ready for the next day start if Congress got their ass in gear for a bill or passed another continuing resolution.
PS don’t give me any bullshit about hours worked; myself and many others pulled hundreds of hours of unpaid time during deployments. And before you get cranked up about “tax free”; government employees pay taxes at the normal rate during deployments, soldiers get the tax break.
They’re only taking a cue from the modern Robber Barons of private industry. Our company started to do that too. Seems Wall Street has a formula -if your revenues are X your headcount should be Y. Too many headcounts (headscount?) and the stock doesn’t go up, the executive bonus stock options don’t pay off. But… Contractors do the same job as real employment without the messy headcount issues. And, in the event of a downturn, they can be told “don’t come in after today”.
“You’re my favorite headcount…” -Pointy-Haired Boss to Dilbert.
See, that’s the difference. In Canada, and most of the rest of the first world, a change in even the implied contract, absent force majeure, requires reasonable notice. There are triggers (depending on business size, layoff count, etc.) that determine whether a layoff and the need for separation pay has been triggered. Which gets to the point - a job is not something to be handed out and yanked away at a whim - it is a livelihood, people depend on it to pay the grocery bill, and the employer has an inordinate imbalance of power; so must use it wisely.
Anyone old enough to remember the vicious riots over coal miners’ strike against Margaret Thatcher in the 1980’s? (Think “Billy Elliot”). Forget nostalgia crap like “how Green Was My Valley”. From what I heard (my dad was from Yorkshire) the miners would show up at the pit each day, and depending on the mood of the boss, or favoritism, you either got to work or didn’t. If you pissed off the boss - miss a few days. If his wife felt your wife had snubbed her at the market - no work for you today. If Joe had bought him a beer last night and you didn’t - no work for you. t wasn’t necessarily even the guy who owned the company - any boss, anywhere up the chain, could take a dislike to your face.
The first thing that happened after the war, all those petty mines were nationalized and miners were guaranteed a steady job and steady income, no layoffs, no being sent home. For most people, being able to afford food was kind of important.
But, times changed.
And that is what we see today with contractors - you work at the employer’s whim, it’s in your contract.
My wife managed several such businesses in Canada, including the classic burger flipping enterprise. She was allowed to ask her employees if they wanted to leave early when things were slow, but could not order them to go home. Most teenagers were happy to go if things were slow. IIRC it’s labour standards, generally you cannot call someone in for a shift of less than 3 hours, and cannot arbitrarily send them home.
As I said, the USA has weird laws (or lack of…)
U.S. Federal employee here. After the 2013 shutdown, we received backpay (with accrued interest, IIRC) for the shutdown period:
It wasn’t chiseled in stone until after the shutdown had ended, but during the shutdown we had every expectation that this would happen, since it had happened with previous shutdowns.
TL,DR: yes, backpay after U.S. federal government shutdowns is the norm, and it has occurred as recently as four years ago.
This has almost always been the case in federal shutdowns. Note, however, that while pre-existing statutory law requires payment for work actually performed, there is no general law requiring back pay for employees who were not working. Such payments are always the result of particularized appropriations after the shutdown. This means that there is always at least some uncertainty; one of these times, Congress may decide not to award back pay.
[quote=“gogogophers, post:27, topic:790047”]
Yes we were.
This not entirely accurate, or rather, there is key information missing. I am a senior manager for a federal IT contractor and have spent about 27 years working for federal contractors. First, the legal authority to work and invoice is absolutely affected by the shutdown. When the federal government shut down in 2013, for example, we received contractual Stop Work orders on all our contracts except one O&M contract that was deemed to be essential services (supporting a public-facing web application). On the contracts with a Stop Work, we continued to work at our own risk and did eventually get paid. However, the only reason we got paid was that these were Firm Fixed Price contracts. We got paid based on fixed prices attached to contract milestones we achieved, so the timing was irrelevant; it didn’t matter if the work was performed during the Stop Work period, we still got paid at the milestone. However, if we had any Time and Materials contracts, that money would be forever lost because we were not authorized to perform the work and therefore could not bill for those hours. You can never make that up.
ETA: In the unlikely event that a shutdown occurred *and *then you do work during on the shutdown on an FFP contract, *and *then upon startup the government terminates your contract for convenience, you will not get paid one dime for any work you did during the shutdown. Normally the government would reimburse costs in such a case but if you are under a Stop Work under you have no claim to recover those costs. IANAL and I have never seen nor heard of this exact scenario; I am just using it to illustrate a point.
I have had no personal experience with that clause, but I would be shocked to see a federal CO sign that contract. Regardless of a CO’s personal feelings, they have a fiduciary duty to the government and can be in some deep shit if it is found that they signed a contract that is not in the government’s best interest. And such a clause, as compassionate as it may be, cannot be in the government’s best interest.
I’m not sure what your point is here. You sound like you think you’re disagreeing with me.