[rellic]

“The “essential” people in government will work, and will get paid.”

I don’t think, so, unless Congress approves it, they have to wait till the shutdown ends. So they have to work without pay. Difference for this shut down is the law was changed in which everybody will get paid at the end of the shutdown. In the past furloughed workers weren’t guaranteed pay, unless Congress specifically acted.

[Myrddin]

My company security officer sent out a notice last week. Procedures for continuity of business. One of the items addresses a government shutdown. When the fed spigot closes, we get "stop work" orders. Staff is forced on PTO to feed the family and pay the bills. For some "essential" tasks, there are "suspense" accounts to track labor expended that must be "paid back" when the spigot opens again. I was on a "critical" program that ran off the end of the contract in March 2013. I had 520 hours of PTO on the books. By the time I was called back in September, I had 32 hours left. It really wasn't a "vacation". I was strung along week after week with the promise that the contract would be signed and work would resume.

Just an aside...I had 13 new hires that I had shepherded through getting clearances, training and turning into a very productive development staff. None of them had much PTO on the books. They had no way to weather the "string along". I lost all of them to competitors. When the customer finally signed the contract, they thought we could just jump back into full stride doing development. Nope. You (customer) squandered a fine team. All gone. We have to start the whole process of recruiting/clearing/training all over again. All I had was the code base (4 million SLOC) in Ada, C, C++, Java, JavaScript, PL/SQL, Perl, SWAG and a damaged 40 TB SAN with gypsum dust damaged drives from sloppy construction practices. Lots of damage VMware VMs. It took 3 weeks to get the build environment working again. Shutdowns can be damaging.