White House May Try to Deny Back Pay to Furloughed Federal Workers

Hundreds of thousands of furloughed federal workers may not automatically receive back pay once the government reopens, President Trump signaled on Tuesday, prompting renewed fears that the administration might try to circumvent federal law and maximize the pain of the shutdown.

The president’s comments, which echoed a draft memo that has circulated at the White House, contradicted the administration’s own guidance that furloughed employees would receive retroactive pay shortly after Congress strikes a funding deal.

Following the longest shutdown in history — a five-week closure that began under Mr. Trump at the end of 2018 — Congress adopted a law that guaranteed back pay for the millions of federal workers who often bear the financial brunt of funding lapses. That measure, known as the Government Employee Fair Treatment Act, applied not only to that closure but also future fiscal lapses, quelling a major source of uncertainty for federal workers caught in the political fray.

Mr. Trump signed that measure into law in 2019. But his administration six years later now appears to have interpreted its guarantees much differently.

In the draft memo, which was shared Tuesday by a White House official, the administration indicated that only the workers who are deemed essential may be automatically entitled to pay once the stalemate ends. That includes military service members, air traffic controllers and others who are currently required to report for duty during the closure.

For those who are furloughed, however, the White House memo laid out the case that Congress still must explicitly approve funding for any payments to occur.

Asked if these workers would indeed lose back pay, Mr. Trump told reporters at the White House that it “depends on who you’re talking about,” adding that there were “some people that really don’t deserve to be taken care of, and we’ll take care of them in a different way.”

Pressed later on the legality of his actions, given the law that he had enacted, Mr. Trump insisted that he would “follow the law, and what the law says is correct.”

Union officials and Democratic lawmakers quickly blasted Mr. Trump for what they described as only the latest attempt to use federal workers as bargaining chips during the shutdown. The president separately has threatened to fire government workers while federal offices remain closed, prompting labor groups to sue in a bid to block the mass layoffs.

Everett Kelley, the national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, said the White House had offered a “frivolous argument” about back pay and an “obvious misinterpretation of the law,” noting that the government itself appeared to take a much different position in public guidance.

In a question-and-answer document posted online by the Office of Personnel Management, the agency specifically says that “employees who were furloughed as the result of the lapse will receive retroactive pay for those furlough periods.”

Senator Patty Murray of Washington, the top Democrat on the chamber’s Appropriations Committee, said on social media that the White House memo marked only “another baseless attempt to try and scare” federal workers.

“The letter of the law is as plain as can be — federal workers, including furloughed workers, are entitled to their back pay following a shutdown,” she said.

Axios earlier reported on the memo.