It's supposed to be payday for many federal workers. Instead, they're getting nothing
It's supposed to be payday for many federal workers. Instead, they're getting nothing
www.npr.org /2025/10/24/nx-s1-5581505/government-shutdown-federal-employees-paycheck
The sight was staggering in Prince George's County, Md., home to more than 60,000 federal workers: middle-class professionals lined up for boxes of pasta, protein and produce to feed their families.
After a two-hour wait, Wanda Bright had finally reached the front of the line --- just as the first batch of supplies ran out.
The Capital Area Food Bank had started the day with 300 boxes, enough for 150 government employees to receive two boxes each. It turned out that the need was even greater.
When a 6 figure income has people living pay check to paycheck and that same paycheck would make others live comfy you have a problem.
We have been pitted against each other.
My salary is around 200k and to much of America I’d be considered a crybaby removed saying how I live paycheck to paycheck and the shutdown might break me.
My plight is closer to the plight of the underemployed worker in middle America who makes a quarter what I make working as many hours or more, their boss can up and fuck them over too on a whim.
If we want the workers in middle America who don’t make near as much as the govt workers or workers on the coasts / in cities do then we have to go out of our way to lift them up too.
Anyways. This shutdown is bullshit and I know of at least 4 projects that have already cost the government in excess of 2 million dollars that are just going to die because the funding is gone and the facility is closed and the product can’t be delivered. Everyone is being laid off, all the knowledge going away.
There are a couple issues the left-of-center crowd have pushed that would help everyone's wages: Higher minimum wage would raise wages beyond those at the minimum. Universal healthcare would allow workers to be less tied to their current jobs (and enable more entrepreneurship Anti corruption measures and progressive taxation aren't quite as popular among mainstream Dems, but would go a long way as well. There's a lot of work to do and the longer this shotshow goes on, the harder it will be later, as you say. America is losing so much expertise and power to this fascist garbage
Those are two different things. Gov workers, especially if unionized, aren't living large; maybe contractors will be 'on par' with outside jobs because their job is an outside job. But internal gov workers typically make noticeably less than their external counterparts because their either union or they work for that higher-purpose feeling and their bosses have optimized wages down to suit.
For example, even though I'm a contractor to merely a gov-adjacent group, I work a 200k job for barely half that. And yes, the dead sea effect is chronic. (But I am union, so I get perqs)
Anyway, gov people will feel a crunch very early too, as "care for our fellow human" isn't a payment option at Kroger.
I’m lumping the contractors who work adjacent to the gov employees as the same group tbh because I’m seeing them laid off in droves too.
Shutdown means no contract extensions means employees just aren’t there anymore instead of laid off. It’s another method of hurting his opponents.
200k? Yeah you’re a crybaby removed—and bad at managing money.
Thank you for proving my point