In D.C., furloughed workers hope shutdown’s end means a return to normal

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WASHINGTON, D.C. — With a deal finally in sight, Washington is breathing a sigh of relief. But for some 800,000 federal employees, along with an unknown number of federal contractors, subcontractors and their employees, the government shutdown and debt ceiling crisis in Washington can’t end soon enough.

Meki Bracken, 31, who works in the advance office of the Secretary of Labor, received her last check, including only half of her regular salary, a week ago.

“I’m not getting paid, so that’s the biggest thing that’s changed,” she told TheGrio. “I am not working and I’m also not able to communicate about work or with my coworkers about work. I can talk to my coworkers but we can’t discuss any work or do any kind of work activities.”

Bracken says she has remained “surprisingly busy” since getting her furlough notice on October 1^st.

“I don’t know why, but I just haven’t felt comfortable not doing anything,” she said. And so she has filled her time running errands, catching up on doctor’s appointments, and developing her blog, called “How to date a loser.”

“I also had this idea for an app that I started doing mockups for,” she said. “So all these little projects [and] ideas that I’ve had” have become her focus.

Bracken says her friends have been helpful, not allowing her to pay for anything when they’re out, and she is avoiding spending any cash – opting to put all of her expenses on her credit card instead, in the hopes that a resumed paycheck will be one step ahead of the bill. Her next paycheck – and most of her bills – are due to arrive in two weeks, though only the latter will come for sure. Still, she says she sees herself as one of the lucky ones.

“It’s not like I don’t have money to pay my day to day bills,” she said. “It’s just that I don’t know when I’m going to get my next steady paycheck, and so I’m trying to conserve and just be conscious of how I’m spending my money.”

“I think I’m in a good situation and I don’t feel like mine is the worst by any stretch,” she adds. “But I have friends and coworkers who are supporting their families, who are really struggling to figure out how they’re going to make ends meet. Even with this last paycheck, it wasn’t a full paycheck and it’s already impacting them.”

Struggling to keep food on the table

For John Anderson, the shutdown has been a crisis.

The 38-year-old divorced father of two was laid off from his job as a line cook at the National Museum of the American Indian on the Mall, when the contractor, Restaurant Associates, was waived due to the museum closures on October 1^st.

Anderson, who rents a room with his 16-year-old son, a junior in high school, has been making due by taking odd jobs whenever he can find them.

“I have a carpentry background,” he said, “so I go out and do little side jobs. I know a couple little subcontractors that still need a little help here and there, and I call around to other managers, that I know, to see if they have any work at their units.”

He says he has put in a ceiling fan here, a toilet there, and that has helped keep him and his son from losing their room.

But without a check since last Friday, he is struggling to keep a roof over their heads and pay child support for his daughter, a high school senior who lives with her mom.

Anderson says his son understand what’s going on, “because I’m constantly talking with him and explaining everything.” But he’s quick to add, “I’m not trying to explain how desperate I am right now because he has school and has that to worry about and I’m doing what I can just to get him back and forth to school and put food on the table.”

Anderson says he was earning $10.50 an hour at the museum, and was just in line to get a $1 an hour raise when the shutdown hit.

“I was about to get an apartment and I just got approved, but everything had to stop. Everything was working good up until the furlough. I was supposed to be moving in next month.”

Because he was laid off and not furloughed, he won’t be receiving back pay when the government reopens. “We’re not furloughed. We’re private industry.”

“The day of the shutdown, we were told if you’re scheduled to work, or you’re not scheduled to work, everybody come in. So everybody came in and they explained to us that they were gonna be laying us off. They are contractors and when we get back the work, you’ll get back to work. And here’s the letter that explains that we’re laying you off and you should use this to collect unemployment.”

Anderson says some of the people he worked with at the museum have begun collecting petitions to join a union. “Because right now we have nobody, we’re just left out to dry with no support, nobody backing us, nobody to help us out or anything. So we basically have to go ahead and get what we can get until things are back to normal.”

He recently gave a speech in front of the Smithsonian Museum with other laid off workers, and a group of activists that included Rev. Jesse Jackson. The speech read in part:

My daily decisions are not about going to the gym or to a yoga class, but rather can I afford to pay transportation so my son can get an education, or does he stay home and I use that money to feed him?

I cannot afford to send money to my other child. My daughter will go lacking, and no man wants their children to suffer, but these are the consequences of the shutdown.

This Friday I get my final check, which is only half of what I would usually get because of the government shutdown. On my salary, I could only afford to rent a room, and I usually pay rent weekly, but I will not be paying my rent this week because of the government shutdown.

What happens to me and my son, if this doesn’t change? I’m afraid the longer this takes to get resolved, the deeper the financial hole will be that I cannot get out of.

I’m a father. I am a man. And I am here I to tell Republican John Boehner that I am not a pawn in his game.

For the first time in my life, I will be going to a Food Bank, so I can feed my son.

Anderson said that if he could talk directly to Boehner and other members of Congress, he would ask them, “What’s the problem? Why are y’all treating us like pawns — worthless pawns — just for an ego game? I don’t understand it. You’ve got people out here barely making it check to check, and now we’re living day to day. And it’s like they don’t care about it. It’s like if we get evicted, we get evicted. When is the BS gonna stop?”

Bracken says she would tell members of congress “they need to realize that at the end of the day they’re effecting the day to day lives of good people,” and that they need to know that “this is a very personal situation for most people and it’s not just politics.”

Follow Joy Reid on Twitter at @TheReidReport.