Every day the government stays closed, hundreds of thousands of dedicated public employees go without pay. Tell your senator to re-open and fund the government.
Tell Congress to repeal the tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations instead of cutting the vital programs that benefit nearly one-third of the U.S. population.
Tom Chamberlain, Oregon AFL-CIO president
on Thursday, January 17 - 10:36am
Eight hundred thousand workers. That is the number of government employees and contractors impacted by President Trump’s shutdown of the federal government. The average take home pay of impacted workers is around $500 per week, and any financial uncertainty is sure to cause stress and anxiety over how to make ends meet. Each day of this manufactured crisis, working families lose money for housing, healthcare and groceries — the essentials we need to get by.
Marissa J. Lang
on Wednesday, January 16 - 10:25am
Furloughed federal employees and out-of-work contractors greeted one another Thursday with a sarcastic nickname that, on the 20th day of a partial government shutdown, captured their feeling of powerlessness: “Hello, fellow pawns.”
They shouted it to one another over the brutal wind and bitter cold on Thursday in downtown Washington, where hundreds gathered to demand government leaders put an end to the shutdown and allow them to get back to work.
1. Janus dealt a heavy blow to labor—but public-sector unions didn’t crumble overnight.
In June, the Supreme Court issued its long-awaited ruling in Janus v. AFSCME—and it was just as bad as everyone feared. In a 5-to-4 decision, the court found that public-sector unions violated the First Amendment by collecting so-called fair-share fees from workers who aren’t union members but benefit from collective bargaining regardless.
A federal employee union sued the Trump administration Monday overthe government shutdown, claiming it is illegal for agencies to force employees to work without pay.
