Unpaid federal employees recalled so they can pay federal contractors
By Joe Davidson
Columnist
January 25 at 7:00 AM
In a policy reversal sure to sting suffering federal employees, the Trump administration is calling some furloughed feds back to work with no pay so agencies can pay federal contractors.
Guidance issued Tuesday by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) comes as 800,000 federal workers, about half of whom are now working without wages, will miss a second paycheck as the partial government shutdown persists like a chronic illness. They will get back pay when the shutdown is over.
The guidance says employees may be “excepted from furlough to make timely payments” to companies from funds previously obligated. Having unpaid workers return to work to pay contractors is, the guidance added, “akin to the well-established practice of excepting personnel who are needed to make benefits payments … such as social security benefits.”
This reverses a policy implemented almost exactly one year ago. In a memo then to agencies, OMB Director Mick Mulvaney said the need to make payments “on a timely basis does not, by itself, qualify as one of the limited circumstances for which obligations can be incurred.”
“There may be circumstances in which making a payment, during the funding lapse, is necessary,” the 2018 memo added. But paying contractors simply because the money is available is not one of those reasons. In fact, it is illegal, according to an OMB lawyer with the Obama administration.
more
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/01/25/unpaid-federal-employees-recalled-work-pay-federal-contractors/
