It's Time for Federal Workers to Get Sick

[babylonsister]

https://prospect.org/article/it%E2%80%99s-time-federal-workers-get-sick?fbclid=IwAR13JH8jpJCjqeevG_0POJ0iP_6VnMMD-0baCgQSE4uTXt5BpeKrTvuEaPk


It’s Time for Federal Workers to Get Sick
Joseph A. McCartin
January 14, 2019
A sickout by unpaid federal employees could bring the impasse—and their status as hostages to the president’s whim—to an end.


Some hostage situations are only resolved when the hostages themselves act, upending their captor’s strategy.

We have now entered uncharted territory, the longest government shutdown in U.S. history. As President Donald Trump hesitates to call for a state of emergency, which prominent members of his own party oppose and which courts would likely find unconstitutional, a resolution to this standoff is elusive. That brings us to a possibility that would have been unthinkable only a week ago—that collective action by federal workers might be the most plausible mechanism at hand to free the nation from the impasse in which we now are mired.

This partial shutdown can continue only as long as hundreds of thousands of federal workers cooperate with it by working without pay, and often having to do more because many of their colleagues have been furloughed. What if the stress levels these workers are enduring began to sicken them in numbers large enough to impede an array of vital functions, including air travel? Would the Republican senators who approved funding for the affected departments in December—only to back away when President Trump abruptly decided to insist on funding for his border wall—continue to stand with the president as these functions ground to a halt? Or would they be secretly relieved to have to pass a bill over the president’s veto that would reopen government and get workers back on the job? No matter what they say in public, the latter scenario seems more likely.

Federal workers have no right to strike, and the last significant national collective action by a group of federal workers ended disastrously when the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) defied the strike ban and walked off their jobs on August 3, 1981, only to be fired by President Ronald Reagan and permanently replaced. In part due to the painful legacy of PATCO, no union has breathed a word about collective action by federal workers to end the current impasse.

But a spontaneous sickout of federal workers in response to the present situation would present a different set of facts than obtained in 1981. First, no union would (or would need to) initiate or coordinate the action. Second, most Americans would understand why it had become intolerable for these employees to work under present conditions. Unlike the air traffic controllers, who were widely portrayed as having deserted highly paid jobs in order to pressure the government for even more money, employees who engaged in a sickout to protest their hostage status would be doing so as a last resort and demanding only that they not be deprived of their paychecks.

snip//

Most of all, sickened federal workers would be demanding that government be allowed to work again for its employers—the people of the United States. By exercising their own agency, they might not only find that the vast majority of those employers support them, but that they also can send a clear message that henceforth they refuse to be treated as hostages. In this age of yawning inequality and anemic worker bargaining power, that message might lift the spirits not only of federal employees, but of millions of other American workers.

[beachbum bob]

1. IF all federal workers working unpaid decide to call in "sick" for say a week, the end of the

shutdown and a revolt against McConnel and Trump would be huge and the GOP would have to take action. But reality wise, 99% unlikely as to many americans have a hard time working with others and why we have such low union memebership numbers

[jberryhill]

2. Quite a few of them are also honest

It may be difficult to believe, but there are people who will not call in sick when they are not sick, because they don't like to lie.

[ooky]

3. That's a fact.

They should skip the call ins and all just agree they are done with this nonsense and aren't coming in any longer until they get paid. Not striking, no picket lines, just needing pay for work.

You can't force people to work without pay.

If they all did that at once and shut down all the airports in the country Mitch would have to come out of hiding real quick. They have the most leverage if they want to use it.

[babylonsister]

4. Could even be illegal to force people to work without pay...

Link to tweet

[malaise]

6. Precisely

Shut it down - why should they run up death for these Cons

[ooky]

7. Let the airports close until they receive the money they are already owed.

See how fast Mitch comes off his high horse and gets those payments coming.

[ooky]

8. With interest.

[ooky]

5. Sorry meant this response to jberryhill's post.

[EffieBlack]

9. With all due respect, I think it's time for non-federal workers to stop telling federal workers what

they should or shouldn't do.

It's easy to sit on the sidelines and second guess and give instructions to the people who are actually suffering through this. But it's not helpful to those who actually have skin in the game.

Instead of telling them what I think they should be doing, I simply thank them for their service and sacrifice and offer to be helpful to them in any way they think is appropriate.