OPM: Employees who work during shutdown will be paid (eventually)
April 6th, 2011 | Pay & Benefits | Posted by Stephen Losey
The Office of Personnel Management last night posted more information on what a shutdown would mean, and cleared up one major outstanding question: “Excepted” employees who are ordered to keep working without pay during a shutdown will be repaid once the budget mess is resolved.
Most observers expected that would be the case, but OPM General Counsel Elaine Kaplan told labor representatives last month that was an unresolved legal question. (Last time the government shut down, Congress repaid everybody even if they didn’t work.) That didn’t sit well with union leaders, and last week the American Federation of Government Employees sent Attorney General Eric Holder a letter that said forcing employees to work without a guarantee they would be paid would violate the Thirteenth Amendment, which outlawed slavery and involuntary servitude in 1865.
So whatever happens, at least the federal government isn’t going to make its employees into slaves.
Tags: government shutdown