‘Essential’ U.S. Employees May Have Nothing to Show for Their Labor : Government: Because of shutdown, workers will get half their pay in ‘final’ check. But procedural quirk will take out full raft of deductions.
Like a deer frozen in headlights, Sally Imura saw the federal government shutdown coming as far back as last summer, but she was unable to protect herself from the impending doom.
“Heck no! I couldn’t save anything because of my living expenses,” said Imura, who earns more than $50,000 annually as a registered nurse in the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Long Beach. “I’m like most Americans. I live from paycheck to paycheck.”
As one of the 480,000 federal workers considered “essential,” she has been reporting to work in the VA hospital’s psychiatric division. But just like the 280,000 federal workers who have been deemed “nonessential” and furloughed, she expects to receive only one more paycheck until the budget impasse in Washington is resolved.
Worse, through a quirk of government payroll procedures, that “final” check, which will be deposited in her account Tuesday, will contain no take-home pay.
Imura is one among many. Just as the federal government is unable to balance its trillion-dollar-plus checkbook, federal employees are staring at their own household budgets with the same dilemma: how to make ends meet when debts continue to mount and income has stopped.
Every two weeks, the stub of Imura’s paycheck shows her gross earnings of $2,137.62. Out of that total, deductions of $1,095.25 are removed for such things as retirement benefits, taxes, insurance and health premiums, union dues and personal loans through her credit union. Thus, her usual take-home pay is $1,042.37--or roughly $2,100 for the month--from which she pays normal household expenses, credit card debts and a monthly mortgage of $1,100.
“Most months it’s just enough to squeeze by, if I don’t have additional expenses or something that throws me behind,” she said in a telephone interview Friday.
But next week, the income side of her personal budget goes into default. She is to be paid for a two-week pay period that ended Dec. 23, but the shutdown on Dec. 16 forced the government to renege on paying workers for the second week.
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As a consequence, Imura’s gross earnings will be halved to $1,068.81. But the government payroll apparatus will calculate deductions as if she were paid the full amount. She’s done the arithmetic: her check will reflect deductions totaling $26.44 more than her gross pay.
“I won’t have enough to pay the mortgage,” she said. “I’ll have to scrape by. I’ll ask my friends to help me, but it’s so embarrassing.”
Imura has yet to explain her predicament to her creditors, including Home Savings of America, which holds the mortgage on her home.
“I don’t want to do that until I absolutely can’t pay them,” she said. “What if I want to refinance in the future. I think they might be reluctant to offer me credit, you know, because I work for the federal government, which is unstable.”
Mary Trigg, a spokeswoman for Home Savings, said Friday that Imura would be making a mistake to wait to call. “We recommend that anyone experiencing difficulties call us as soon as they’re having trouble,” Trigg said. To date, she said, no federal workers have done so.
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“We recognize this is above and beyond their ability to control and wouldn’t hold it against them,” Trigg said. “We’ll extend them 30 days forbearance and will work out a repayment schedule if it goes beyond that.”
John Hanson, the deputy assistant secretary for intergovernmental affairs at the Department of Veterans Affairs in Washington, said it is possible that an unknown number of federal workers will miss paying their mortgages and other debts in January.
He said that the dilemma stems from the government’s inability to alter the schedule of deductions taken from workers’ pay.
“That’s just how the program works,” he said, sighing. “It’s very difficult for people to understand how this can happen and its even more difficult to try and explain it to them. But there’s nothing we can do about it.”
The result, Hanson said, is that federal employees, such as Imura, who have deductions that are greater than half of their regular gross pay will receive “a check for nothing.” She will, however, recover every penny when the budget standoff ends--possibly in time for her Jan. 16 check, he said.
Veterans Affairs workers are especially hard hit because 202,000 of them are considered emergency employees who are required to remain on the job during the shutdown, providing health care to people in 172 VA hospitals nationally and burying deceased veterans.
In addition, a skeleton crew working in VA offices is accepting claims for benefits but is unable to pay any benefits until the government is back in operation.
“The bulk of our people are in hospitals keeping veterans alive and they’re doing it while not getting paid,” Hanson said. “No budget, no money. But we can’t just shut down our hospitals.”
William Raymer, the chief financial officer at the Long Beach VA hospital, said that about 3,100 people are employed at the institution. Two hundred of them showed up Friday morning for a meeting to hear what the hospital was doing to help tide them over until their normal paychecks resume.
Raymer said the employees were told that a food-service firm, which provides canteen services, was extending credit to hospital workers and permitting them to write checks post-dated to Jan. 16 so that they could purchase groceries, clothing and other necessities.
The federal credit union is also making arrangements with its members to delay payments and extending relaxed membership to federal workers who do not belong to the credit union.
“I don’t know how long these arrangements will last because everybody has bills, even creditors,” Raymer said. “At this point in time, we’re just hoping that we get a continuing resolution by next week so that this doesn’t extend too far into the next pay period.”
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Nevertheless, Imura remains angry and frustrated. Her feelings spiked to rage when she was told that President Clinton and members of Congress, who must approve a budget deal before she gets another paycheck, are collecting their pay during the shutdown.
“Say what!” she shouted. “That’s terrible. I didn’t know they were getting paid. They’re federal employees too.”
“I’d like to lock them in a room with no food, no water, no bathrooms--and no pay!” she said. “Then, I’d like to see how soon they would get this resolved.”
