Recently, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the single largest union for federal workers, has come out and called for an end to the government shutdown. They have come out and protested the hold on the government and have called for those in power to pass a “clean” bill to provide funding and reopen the government.
The AFGE’s primary concern is the concerns of its members, federal government workers, and ensuring that they are treated fairly by their employers. With the current government shutdown, over 750,000 federal workers have been furloughed, and another 730,000 are forced to keep working without pay due to being essential workers.
The current government shutdown has negatively impacted over a million government workers and has caused widespread issues for everything that relies on government funding. It is not the lawmakers who are feeling the pain from this shutdown; it is the common people who work for the government who are feeling the pain from their decisions. The AFGE has seen and felt the negative impact this shutdown is having on the workers of America, and they are calling for it to end as soon as possible.
However, despite the largest union for federal workers coming out and showing their distaste for this shutdown, democrats are not willing to back down and pass a “clean” bill like the union is requesting, keeping the federal workers without jobs or pay.
This shutdown has been ongoing for four weeks now, the second longest in American history. That means for the past 4 weeks, nearly 1.5 million federal workers have not been paid and have been forced to use their savings to survive, if they had savings to use.
The AFGE has also made requests for backpay for government workers to make up for the lost income the workers are owed for their work done. It is still unknown if this request will be accepted, and it will most likely not be debated until the shutdown comes to a close.
