When the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's government attorney went to work at the end of the 43-day government shutdown, a banner outside the building read, “Welcome back, NOAA!” Someone managed to hang it before staff arrived, despite the return to work notice received just after 11pm the night before.
“It was touching,” says the lawyer. “It's good to be back.”
She was among about 670,000 government workers furloughed during the nation's longest federal shutdown, which ended Nov. 12 when Congress approved a spending bill through the end of January. The workers spanned government agencies from NOAA to the Department of Justice.
Why did we write this
The government shutdown has impacted federal employees and the work they do on behalf of Americans. As they return to work, some reflect on the value of what they do and the mountain they must climb to make up for lost time.
Workers have to sift through stacks of emails and phone calls that need to be answered.
Some may take a few days to get to work, while others may take weeks. This means the same is true for Americans who rely on government services. And for some workers, the closures were another blow to a difficult year as the Trump administration sought to shrink the federal bureaucracy by encouraging early retirement or through layoffs, including laying off about 4,000 people during the shutdown. (They will be returned as part of the transaction ending the closure.)
The Monitor spoke with six federal employees about their return. All but one asked not to be identified because they fear they could be fired for speaking out publicly, and one cited a Washington Post report that the Trump administration plans to fire an Agriculture Department employee for giving a television interview in which she spoke about the impact of the shutdown on her team. All employees who spoke to the Monitor said they were speaking for themselves and not on behalf of their agencies.
They watched the quarantine drag on and were often reminded that they were considered “non-essential” workers. Now they want to move forward.
“I think we all felt like we were losing momentum,” says another NOAA official. “I’m just ready to come back and serve the community.”
“The first person I call back”
A NOAA lawyer spent her first morning helping co-workers pull boxes of office plants out of their cars, passing out a banner on the agency's building along the way.
Her job is to monitor violations of federal marine resource laws for NOAA. She immediately noticed several missed emails and phone calls from a fisherman who had a civil case filed against him just days before the shutdown began.
He wanted to pay a civil fine to get the case dismissed. But because of the closure, NOAA was unable to send him an invoice.
“This is the first person I call back,” she decided. “I am very sorry that he waited almost seven weeks for a response from the agency, even though he is trying to do his part and take responsibility.”
As she makes up for missed work, the attorney's biggest priority is ensuring that enforcement cases are active and can move forward. She's confident she'll be up to the task, but it will require some juggling.
Another NOAA employee who has worked for the agency for more than 25 years found a way to reconnect with the agency's mission. While on vacation, she walked 63 miles along Monterey Bay in California, picking up trash and listening to the sound of the waves along the way.
The first thing on her to-do list is filling out her timesheet so she can finally get paid. But her priority is work she believes in: getting money to go toward educational programs that NOAA helps fund that are designed to educate new generations of Americans about earth sciences. It will take weeks, perhaps a month, to get back up to speed.
She can succeed in most programs, but not all. Some of the schools she works with have missed field trips that they can't reschedule. Some school and community gardens that receive federal funding have missed their planting season.
According to her, “all projects will be affected to a minor extent, and some – to a very significant extent.” “I don't save people's lives. But I do believe that my presence in my community is valuable.”
“It's constant change”
One Defense Department employee who returned to the office said she was pleasantly surprised that technical staff made sure all computers had updated software and security patches, which could potentially leave a large number of computers unusable.
One problem: Employees whose public access cards, which allow people into buildings, had expired had to renew them.
While there have been no major challenges returning to work, returning to the office does come with personal challenges.
“Within a month, we got used to being at home and taking care of our family members,” says the employee. “It’s a lot of stress, constant change… I was thinking about leaving.”
“There will be a crazy rush”
Teresa Kim didn't think of her vacation as a vacation. During this time, she volunteered to help 27 UNIHTED raise more than $20,000 for families affected by the closure. She spotted at least 10 of her NIH colleagues at these volunteer events.
“It was a time to think about who needs us,” she says, “and where can we serve?”
Dr. Kim has now returned to her regular work in health systems research. But it doesn't look like things are back to normal—especially since government funding is set to run out again in January unless Congress passes a new spending bill.
“I'm sure there will be a mad scramble to get things done before January 31st,” she says, as she believes the government will shut down again.
That means two big scrambles, she said: one to get projects done before the holidays, and another to get more things done before the end of January.
The shutdown, which began Oct. 1 and ended last Wednesday, could also have a significant impact on the research grant process for scientists, says another National Institutes of Health official.
For example, a staff member says that the NIH may have to reduce the number of grant applications they can review due to the loss of review time.
“This jeopardizes our long-term competitive and financial advantage,” says the NIH official. “Many breakthroughs in medicine and technology begin with taxpayer-funded grants.”
“We were all used as pawns”
One Justice Department civil servant didn't have much of a backlog. Part of this is because the things she was working on were also put on hold during the holidays, so it wasn't too difficult to pick up where she left off.
But the workload has also become lighter because she works in the agency's civil rights division, and their workload has been reduced significantly under the second Trump administration. The department's focus now is on cases of anti-Semitism rather than potential violations of the rights of Black, Latino or LGBTQ+ people.
The civil servant has faced other work stoppages in her more than 20 years in government. She says she and her colleagues were expecting something like this and she had money saved to help her get through it, although she said she sent friends on holiday who were “really stressed”.
However, when the Trump administration suggested in early October that some workers might not receive back wages despite being legally required to do so, it caused great concern.
“We were all pawns in this war with Republicans and Democrats,” she says.
The administration says it is working to pay all employees.
However, despite the challenges they face, there is a general consensus among civil servants: they are happy to get back to work.
“We don't go into this job thinking we'll make a lot of money,” says Dr. Kim. “We do this because we want to serve our country.”
Caitlin Babcock and Scott Baldauf reported from Washington and Eli Martin from Los Angeles.
