It started with a meeting of managers on Tuesday morning. Every manager in this federal facility except for one is fairly young, in their early to mid 30's. There is was, the one guy who had been there for 25 years. At 50, he'd seen a lot of people come and from here, but he'd spent his entire working life at this federal facility, loving his work. He was a professional, but had also been a member of the union for that same 25 years, and he had been concerned as of late, that too many young people didn't seem to see the need for unions. He is a manager now, but he still softly tells his employees that joining the union is a benefit for them, and supporting the union helps all the employees and is the reason they make a living wage and that they enjoy such great benefits. More than 10,000 people worked in this one facility, and no one knew how many people were going to be affected by the shut down and furloughs. This facility was the largest employer where he lived too, and wondered how many littel businesses would be affected by this shutdown. They had just struggled through a huge slow down in the local economy anyway, he did wonder how much more it could take and still recover.

His day was going to be full of meetings, the thing he hated most about his job. There would be union meetings, all hands meetings and manager meetings. They had no idea who would be furloughed, what the ramifications of those furloughs would be or if they would be working without pay andd no one would be furloughed. What would happen to things like health insurance benefits, life insurance benefits, obviously premiums would not be paid, by their employer or by the employee, would they remain covered, would they have to pay the premiums to remain covered, they simply had no clue what would happen. And no one was saying anything. Everyone seemed to be getting the feeling that this shutdown was going to be much worse than what happened in 1995. He lived through that shut down too, but he was not furloughed back then and they seemed relatively unaffected by that shutdown.

He went to the next meeting, it was a union meeting. They had little information themselves, but they talked about a lawsuit because of the government rule against volunteering your time. The furloughed and the non-furloughed, some people would be chosen, others would be applying for unemployment, but no one knew who it would be. The Union heads began to talk and address issues. At first they began with the partisanship in Washington and their inability or unwillingness to get their jobs done. Even though the prior shutdown in 95 didn't affect this particular facility, this year, they were sure they would be affected. So it was time for employees to prepare.

There was an explanation of what a furlough was and what it would constitute for the employee. Ahh, a nice government pamphlet released by the Office of Personnel Management ("OPM") and handed out by the unions to each union member, but still no word on anything, not even word to prepare for a shutdown.  Furloughed employees are barred by law from volunteering to do their jobs while they are locked out.  This is federal code, 31 U.S.C. 1342.  In the meantime, some of the larger unions indicated they would be preparing lawsuits because non-furloughed employees will be forced to violate 31 U.S.C. 1342, but it isn't anything they have great confidence can work.

Then came this afternoon, the all hands meeting in every area of the facility were called as people prepared to brace for the shutdown. At this poing all that was being said was that everyeone should show up for work on Monday. They would find out then whether or not they would be working through the looming shutdown. Immediately after the large meeting with all employees in their departments, that was the all hands meetings for the managers of those departments. The managers were bracing themselves, they knew by the look on the faces of the bigwigs that the hammer was being lowered.

Their department of 34 had to furlough 20 people. More than half of the staff there, but the work priorities remained. There was lots of work to be done and now they would be doing that work and that is when the hammer came down, in his department they had to have a list of 20 people for furlough, and he had to choose three from his own branch. He had to consider everything so he put himself on the furlough list, to keep the young fathers working. One was the sole support of his family and the other has three children. It was obvious who would be able to sustain this for a short time and who wouldn't. That particular request was denied, he had been there so long and had all the double top secret clearances, he was deemed essential by the folks in DC. So he and the other managers who furloughed themselves successfully flipped coins to decide who would be furloughed and who would stay on the job. The folks that would be furloughed had no guarantee of getting their pay after the shut down was over. He fully expected this would be different again, this time, in 1995 employees who had been furloughed received retroactive pay, but this year, he knew would be different.

This Congress was different, intransigent, and he figured it would be an act of God to get his employees paid retroactively. He'd listened to the Congressfolks before leaving for work that morning they seemed intransigent, and not to care that the government was shutting down and 800,000 people would suddenly be out of work. He began to prepare some other things for his employees to give them when they found out they would be furloughed, he prepared a small pamphlet, how to get unemployment, was the top priority. It was really unclear to them how long the shut down would last. He felt really bad that come Monday some of his own people were going to be sent home. He felt bad he had to keep this secret and no one could know. He felt bad that those folks in DC would continue to get their pary while everyone else suffered. He hoped the unions would come through and be able to take some action. But federal employees are barred from suing their employer so that would be a huge step, one that wasn't likely to take place. He kept his fingers crossed that things would be resolved quickly, but somewhere deep down, he knew better, he knew congress seemed to be in this for the long haul. He wondered how many people would suffer and how deeply while they played on the sidelines, arguing over abortion funding, when it isn't even funded by the government in the first place. There is no telling how or when this will end. I will attemp to keep updates coming when I can.