Press Reports on Salary Hits from Lockout include CPSCers

Media accounts of economic challenges to federal employees due to delayed pay have included those of CPSC staff.

The New York Times January 16 reported (nyti.ms/2QWAE4M) that the average CPSC employee had missed $7,345 as of that date and that about $4 million was owed to the agency's 550 workers.

The newspaper put CPSC at 12th among the 30 agencies it reviewed. Atop the list was the Securities and Exchange Commission, where the average person had missed $12,543, while at the bottom was the Armed Forces Retirement Home at $3,987.

Meanwhile, a January 15 online report from ABC News (abcn.ws/2Hg01yQ) on federal employees receiving food assistance included a photo of a CPSC staffer visiting such an event put on by the Amalgamated Transit Union.

That photo was from a series (bit.ly/2HeHyCx) offered by Getty Images and included the CPSC staffer's daughter as well as her interaction with Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), whose district includes CPSC's headquarters.

About 20 of CPSC's roughly 550 staffers were pegged to work without pay under the agency's December shutdown memo (PSL, 12/24/18). They can do only tasks in response to "substantial and immediate threats to human safety" or furlough-related duties such as securing government property, controlling funds, or suspending contract services.

The rest are barred from working and will not receive paychecks until after the shutdown ends. It also is possible that some of the 20 or so excepted staffers have been furloughed subsequently as happened in other shutdowns that lasted more that a few days.

For perspective on the effects of deferred pay, consider that the Washington, DC, region is among the most expensive in the nation to live. Inc. (bit.ly/2VVWaKm) and Kiplinger (bit.ly/2VWRqEv) both rank the area as the fifth most costly. USA Today sets it ninth but uses a larger geographic area extending to parts of West Virginia (bit.ly/2QNPCtH).

CPSC has identified hiring and retaining good staffers as one of four key challenges in its 2018-2022 strategic plan, writing, "Having a highly trained, diverse, and engaged workforce is critical to meeting the dynamic challenges of the consumer product safety landscape and achieving the CPSC’s life-saving mission" (PSL, 2/19/18).

Although not mentioned in CPSC's strategic plan, recurring governments shutdowns – and this one in particular – can jeopardize agencies' abilities to hire and retain good employees, not just from the salary insecurity but also due to the denigration and morale erosion that can accompany one.

However, some people frame such infliction of fear, shame, and demoralization as justified and even positive. For example, an anonymous person billed as a senior administration official working high in an unnamed federal agency January 14 wrote an essay (bit.ly/2RsZHBv) in the Daily Caller lauding the possibility that "the strain of the shutdown" on federal employees if it "lasts a very long time" might change the government so it "can never return to its previous form."

The writer vilified federal workers, opining that only 15% work dutifully, and even depicted them as enemies, claiming to spend 85% of the time "trying to stop sabotage." This purported administration official called for "shuttered government agencies: lock the doors, sell the furniture, and cut them down…We do not want most employees to return because we are working better without them."

On the other hand, The Washington Post took the opposite view on the virtue and utility of harming federal workers to achieve the goals of downsized government and improved efficiency. In a January 18 editorial, it concluded:

"Of course there’s waste and incompetence in the federal government, as we have pointed out on numerous occasions and in numerous contexts. A surefire way to get more waste and incompetence, however, is to demonstrate to America’s best and brightest that they would be foolish to work for the government. Even if the shutdown were to end tomorrow – as, alas, it appears unlikely to do – the message of contempt it sends to federal workers, and the negative impact it may have on recruitment, could take years to reverse."