Originally Posted by
WillCAD
Um...
When you work for a private company, if you show up and work, they MUST pay you. End of story, that's the law.
If a company is under contract to the fed, and they are not issued a stop work order during the shutdown, they are contractually obligated to continue working. Their invoices will not be paid until the shutdown ends, but they WILL be paid for any hours worked, shutdown or not.
If the company has been issued a stop work order during a shutdown, then they cannot allow their employees to work on the federal project, and they have two choices - furlough the employee, or put them on another project for the duration of the stop work order.
So, the only private sector employees who will not be paid at all during the shutdown are those who a) work for a company that was issued a stop work order, AND b) work for a company that didn't keep them working on other projects during the shutdown (such as companies who foolishly built their entire customer base on a single client).
Stop work orders have been issued to numerous major contractors, leaving many important functions at agencies such as EPA dormant.
The problem is that while those functions are critical and the failure to monitor has long-term negative impact on all of us, TSA is a front-line operation which is also front-line heavy.
It isn't worth arguing because the fact remains that nothing has or will be done about the people who call in sick and nothing can be done to people who have simply left (some "ghosting" by not even calling in to say they are done.