Free Republic

Nearly a half million federal furloughed employees will turn to their unions to help claw back money they lost as part of the federal government’s scale back of services that went into effect Tuesday. Leading up to the suspension, union leaders said they would lean on lawmakers to ensure that their employees get paid for their forced time off. Congress could vote to retroactively pay workers, and did so for employees affected by the last shutdown in late 1995 and 1996. "The National Treasury Employees Union will be leading the fight to make that happen," president Colleen Kelley told Reuters,...

More than nine out of every ten employees at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are considered "non-essential" and have been furloughed in the federal government's shutdown. Reuters obtained an EPA guidance in which the agency said it would "classify 1,069 employees, out of 16,205, as essential,"...