Federal employees crowdsource resources to support each other during shutdown

A group of former and current civil servants started a petition in September urging Congress to vote against a continuing resolution needed to avoid a government shutdown unless it also included provisions pushing back on the Trump administration’s federal workforce overhauls. While they were spearheading the letter, which has since been signed by more than 2,000 federal employees, the group also was thinking about what to do if a shutdown actually did happen. 

The federal employees came up with a crowdsourced spreadsheet of organizations that are providing assistance to workers who are not getting paid because of the government shutdown, which has been going on since Oct. 1 primarily due to disagreement in Congress over whether to include an extension for expiring Affordable Care Act health insurance subsidies in the CR. 

“We were working on this civil servant coalition letter and asking Congress for a fighting CR and thinking, ‘Well, if there is a shutdown, maybe in part because of this campaign, we should also really be thinking about how this is going to impact our communities,’” said Anna Culbertson, a former National Institutes of Health employee who lost her job as part of the mass firing of new federal employees in their probationary periods. “What are things that we can do as former feds [and] current feds to try to help our communities as robustly and as effectively as possible?”

The spreadsheet is one example of the resources that several nonprofits and state and local governments have encouraged individuals impacted by the shutdown to utilize in order to help weather any financial difficulties caused by the lapse in federal funding. 

Culbertson highlighted that feds are using the spreadsheet to compile credit unions and banks, generally for federal employees or service members, that have programs to assist members experiencing financial hardship as a result of the shutdown. USAA, for example, is offering a no-interest loan to government workers whose pay has been disrupted due to the shutdown. 

While federal employees are entitled to backpay once a shutdown ends under a 2019 law, White House officials are reportedly developing guidance to overrule that requirement. 

Culbertson also pointed to a weekly “peer empowerment call” and other community support events featured in the spreadsheet. The call is put on by 27 UNIHTED, a group founded by her and other former NIH employees following Trump’s workforce reductions at the agency earlier this year and named for the 27 institutes within NIH.

“For this shutdown and this time period for federal employees, it is so valuable for all of us to be like crowdsurfing — uplifting each other — because we are so strong in numbers and just in community,” she said. 

On Monday, the Maryland state government launched its Federal Shutdown Loan Program through which government workers who have been ordered to continue working but are not getting paid because of the shutdown can receive a one-time no-interest $700 loan. 

“At a time when the federal government is stepping back from its most basic obligations, Maryland is stepping up to protect our people,” said Gov. Wes Moore in a statement. “The emergency support we announce today will keep public servants afloat as we enter a second week of this shutdown.” 

Other resources for feds during the shutdown include: 

• If the shutdown lasts past pay day for government workers, the Federal Employee Education and Assistance Fund will offer shutdown assistance grants that historically have been $100. 
• The nonprofit Partnership for Public Service has also compiled resources for federal employees during the shutdown. 
• Some states and localities have put together resources for their residents who have been furloughed, including the state of Maryland, Prince George’s County, Maryland and Alexandria, Virginia. 

While not directly related to the shutdown, Washington, D.C., on Oct. 1 kickstarted the Talent Capital initiative, which includes an artificial intelligence-driven regional job search website and free career coaching for former feds. 

“I always want to say this to our [federal] workers: all you did was go to work every day and do what you were supposed to do,” said D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser at the initiative’s launch. “None of this is your fault.”