Democratic lawmakers scrambled Wednesday to secure backpay for federal contractors before President Trump and congressional leaders strike a deal to resolve the ongoing budget stand-off and prevent another government shutdown. Supporters fear that if they don’t get the legislation while fear of another federal shutdown is fresh, then any congressional interest in helping the contractors will fade out.
“A deal to keep gov’t open is almost done. One of the last issues on the table: back pay for contractors (like custodians & security guards),” tweeted Sen. Tina Smith, D-Minn. “800k federal workers got backpay. This is no different. We only have a few hours. Make your voices heard so we can get this done.”
Smith is the author of the Fair Compensation for Low-Wage Contractor Employees Act, which would require federal agencies to pay their contractors the cost of any compensation “to any employee who was furloughed or laid off, or who was not working … as a result of the lapse in (federal government) appropriations.” The legislation has 48 co-sponsors, only two of whom are Republicans.
It faces an uphill battle. A spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., told the Washington Examiner there were no plans to bring it up for a vote. Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., told reporters Wednesday that he believed that the White House opposed the legislation. A White House spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.
There is no particular deadline for the bill, but backers fear that if the budget stand-off is resolved and shutdowns are no longer a concern, attention will drift elsewhere. “The reason it has to get done now is that people are paying attention,” said Rachel Cohen, spokeswoman for Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., a co-sponsor.
Leaders from both congressional parties announced Wednesday that they supported federal spending legislation that would avert a planned shutdown on Friday, when the last spending bill is set to run out. The deal provides $1.375 billion for building a U.S.-Mexico border wall and would fund nine Cabinet departments and dozens of federal agencies. The deal includes a 1.9 percent pay increase for federal employees, said House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md. The deal is expected to pass by the end of the week.
“I hope as we have this bipartisan deal to avoid the shutdown that we can also put and make it right for the folks who oftentimes many of us don’t see, who clean the buildings, serve the food, many folks again from the disabled community who rely upon us to do the right thing,” Warner said on the Senate floor Wednesday.
Congress passed legislation last month to ensure that the estimated 800,000 federal workers who were not paid during the shutdown that began on Dec. 22 and lasted 35 days got what they would have otherwise earned. That didn’t cover contractors and those who work for them, since they aren’t formally employed by the government. In past shutdown, those workers have had to simply absorb any lost pay that may have resulted.
Contractors do a variety of different jobs for the government, from construction projects to staffing cafeterias. There are an estimated 4.1 federal million federal contractors, though it is unclear how many were impacted by the shutdown given the variety of contracts.
