'Unconscionable': Mike Johnson under fire for sending lawmakers home amid shutdown crisis

The American labor movement erupted in outrage Tuesday after President Donald Trump appeared to go back on the government’s promises to provide back pay to all of the estimated 750,000 furloughed federal workers when the government shutdown ends.

Last month, as a shutdown loomed, the US Office of Personnel Management, an independent government agency that oversees the country’s civil service, published guidance for federal agencies stating definitively that “after the lapse in appropriations has ended, employees who were furloughed as a result of the lapse will receive retroactive pay for those furlough periods.”

This follows a federal law, the Government Employee Fair Treatment Act signed by Trump during the last shutdown in 2019, which requires that furloughed employees “shall be paid for the period of the lapse in appropriations.”

But the Trump administration has begun to walk back that promise. A memo from the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) obtained by Axioson Tuesday stated that the administration’s position was that employees were not all entitled to back pay, and that the money would have to be specifically appropriated by Congress.

”Does this law cover all these furloughed employees automatically? The conventional wisdom is: Yes, it does. Our view is: No, it doesn’t,“ a senior White House official said, adding that despite what guidance other agencies may have given, ”OMB is in charge.“

When asked by reporters Tuesday if furloughed employees would all be paid, Trump seemed to confirm the OMB position, saying that ”it depends on who we’re talking about.”

“For the most part, we’re going to take care of our people,“ he said. “There are some people that really don’t deserve to be taken care of, and we’ll take care of them in a different way.”

When asked why some workers would not get back pay, Trump told reporters to “ask the Democrats that question.”

The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), a union representing over 820,000 federal workers, argued that by denying back pay to furloughed employees, the Trump administration was contradicting both the law and its own assurances to employees.

“The frivolous argument that federal employees are not guaranteed backpay under the Government Employee Fair Treatment Act is an obvious misinterpretation of the law,“ said Everett Kelley, the AFGE’s national president. ”It is also inconsistent with the Trump administration’s own guidance from mere days ago, which clearly and correctly states that furloughed employees will receive retroactive pay for the time they were out of work as quickly as possible once the shutdown is over.“

Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), the top Democrat on the chamber’s Appropriations Committee, said on social media that the White House memo was “another baseless attempt to try and scare and intimidate workers by an administration run by crooks and cowards.”

“The letter of the law is as plain as can be,“ Murray said. ”Federal workers, including furloughed workers, are entitled to their back pay following a shutdown.“

The National Federation of Federal Employees (NFFE), which represents about 110,000 employees, also chimed in with outrage over the decision by House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) to send members of Congress home last week as shutdown negotiations stalled. Johnson has maintained that he will not negotiate on Democrats’ demands to reverse cuts to a critical health insurance subsidy unless they agree to fund the government first.

”Congressional leaders should come back to Washington to negotiate an end to this shutdown immediately. Federal employees, our men and women in uniform, and the American people are all suffering. Skipping town in the middle of a crisis is unconscionable,“ said NFFE’s national president Randy Erwin. ”At this point, House Republicans have refused any meaningful negotiations. It appears to me that Speaker Johnson and his colleagues have no intention of ending this shutdown anytime soon. It seems they would rather sit back and play the blame game than undertake the necessary work to pass bipartisan spending legislation.“

Last week, Trump suggested that, alongside OMB Director Russell Vought, he would use the government shutdown to set about ”laying off a lot of people that are going to be very affected, and they’re Democrats. They’re gonna be Democrats.”

Trump added Tuesday that if the shutdown continues much longer, many government jobs would be on the chopping block “in four or five days“ and that ”a lot of those jobs will never come back.“

On NBC‘s ”Meet the Press“ Sunday, Johnson has described the potential layoffs of thousands of workers as ”regrettable,“ adding that it was ”not a job that [Vought] relishes... But he’s being required to do it by [Senate Minority Leader] Chuck Schumer (D-NY).”

On Thursday, however, Trump had described the shutdown as an “unprecedented opportunity” to carry out Vought’s proposals for cuts to programs and employees across federal agencies.

“The livelihoods of the patriotic Americans serving their country in the federal government are not bargaining chips in a political game,” Kelley said. “It’s long past time for these attacks on federal employees to stop and for Congress to come together, resolve their differences, and end this shutdown.”