SEATTLE —Thousands of National Weather Service (NWS) employees are facing the prospect of missing their paychecks as the government shutdown continues.
According to the National Weather Service Employees Organization, workers are expecting paychecks this week, but it will be their last until the shutdown ends.
“All those bills, everything keeps getting pushed off and collection notices and all that other stuff, so there’s a great deal of worry,” Tom Fahy, legislative director of the National Weather Service Employees Organization, said.
Since the shutdown began, employees have been reaching out to their union for guidance on their next paycheck.
“People are just generally concerned, like, what’s this going to look like? ‘How long is this going’ to ‘How long will this last?” Fahy said.
During the last government shutdown, which started in 2018 and lasted 35 days, employees missed three paychecks, and it took some up to two months to receive their back pay, according to Fahy.
“Everyone had to talk to their mortgage lenders. Everyone had to talk to their landlords. Everyone had to say, ‘It’s coming,'” Fahy recalled.
President Donald Trump indicated to reporters Tuesday some furloughed employees may not receive backpay as expected, saying, “It depends on who we’re talking about. I can tell you this. The Democrats have put a lot of people in great risk and jeopardy, but it really depends on who you’re talking about. But 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.”
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“There’s a law here that says that was passed during the first Trump administration in 2019 that furloughed workers will be paid,” Fahy said. “So when the President says we may not pay federal workers, he’s violating, or discussing violating, a law that was passed during his administration that he signed into law, so it’s really quite difficult.”
Despite concerns of potential employee sick-outs as seen in other government agencies, Fahy said the general public should not expect that from NWS.”We are supposed to be at work,” he said. “We are required to be at work, and all of our people know that we don’t do sick outs.”
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