Oct. 7 (UPI) — As the federal government’s shutdown continues, President Donald Trump on Tuesday suggested some furloughed federal workers won’t get back pay.
Trump made the suggestion in the Oval Office while responding to a reporter’s question ahead of a meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney.
“The Democrats have put a lot of people in great risk and jeopardy,” Trump responded in the press conference.
“For the most part, we’re going to take care of our people. 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.”
The president’s statements echoed a White House draft memo suggesting some furloughed workers won’t automatically receive back pay when the government shutdown eventually ends, The New York Times reported.
Despite the memo and the president’s comments, the Trump administration still indicates that furloughed workers will be paid when they return to work following their forced time off, according to The Times.
The memo was drafted by personnel in the Office of Management and Budget and goes against recent guidance provided by the Office of Personnel Management and the Council of Economic Advisers, according to Axios.
Those entities affirm that the roughly 750,000 furloughed federal workers are entitled to back pay when the federal government reopens, in accordance with the Government Employees Fair Treatment Act of 2019.
The OMB has deleted references to the act on its website and on Sept. 30 replaced it with text that suggests some furloughed workers won’t be paid right away for their forced time away from work.
“All excepted employees are entitled to receive payment for their performance of excepted work during the period of the appropriations lapse when appropriations for such payments are enacted,” the website says, as reported by Government Executive.
The president and White House officials are basing the Trump administration’s latest interpretation on a revised version of the act that says furloughed workers will be paid “subject to the enactment of appropriations acts ending the lapse,” Axios reported.
White House officials have suggested Congress needs to appropriate back pay for those who are laid off during the shutdown, but federal employees who have continued to work while their pay is suspended would get paid right away.
The memo has sparked furor from the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest union of federal workers, which called the Trump administration’s argument against guaranteeing back pay under the act as “frivolous” and “an obvious misinterpretation of the law.”
“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,” Everett Kelley, national president of the AFGE, the largest federal workers union representing 820,000 employees, said in a statement emailed to UPI.
“As we’ve said before, the livelihoods of the patriotic Americans serving their country in the federal government are not bargaining chips in a political game.”
The federal government mostly shut down on Oct. 1 after the Senate could not muster enough support for one of two measures that would fund it until a 2026 fiscal year budget is approved by Congress.
The House of Representatives had approved a continuing resolution that would keep the federal government open for seven weeks by extending the expired 2025 fiscal year budget.
Senate Democrats have introduced an alternative measure that would fund the federal government through Oct. 31 but would add $1.5 trillion in additional spending for health care initiatives.
At least 60 senators must vote to approve either measure to prevent a potential filibuster.