Morale Plummets For Federal Workers Facing Unending Furlough
The work that Shaun O'Connell does is required by law, yet now he's sidelined by the government shutdown.
O'Connell reviews disability claims for the Social Security Administration in New York, checking that no one's gaming the system, while ensuring people with legitimate medical problems are compensated properly.
Billions of dollars are at stake with this kind of work, yet O'Connell is considered a nonessential employee for purposes of the partial government shutdown.
"If you stick with the semantics of essential and nonessential, you could easily be offended," says O'Connell, who has worked for Social Security for 20 years.
There's a difference between what's urgent and what's important. Like other federal employees, O'Connell understands that what he does isn't necessarily crucial on a daily basis, like being a trauma surgeon with the Veterans Administration, for instance, or a member of the Capitol Hill police force.
But he believes what he does is necessary — and that there will be a big backlog of cases waiting for him when he is able to get back to work.
Whenever that may be.
"People aren't having a heart attack and don't need their wounds dressed, but it doesn't change the fact that what we do over the long term makes an absolute difference to the quality of life in this country," says Carolyn Federoff, an attorney with the Department of Housing and Urban Development in Boston. "I never doubt that."
Who Is Essential?
Every agency has to determine which employees are essential and which ones must be furloughed.
Actually, the terms of art now describe federal workers as "exempt" or "not exempt" from furloughs. The use of "nonessential" to describe employees during the federal shutdowns of 1995 and 1996 was considered demeaning.
But "exempt" hasn't exactly caught on. Conservative commentators have seized on the fact that the government is doing without 800,000 workers — including most of those at the Environmental Protection Agency — as proof of waste.
"According to the federal government, 94 percent of EPA employees are 'non-essential," tweeted Campaign for Liberty, a group founded by former Texas GOP Rep. Ron Paul. "Seems low."