US shutdown: Despite being unpaid, why are federal workers still working?

US shutdown: Despite being unpaid, why are federal workers still working?

Loyalty does not make federal workers immune to economic reality; they still need to make mortgage and car payments

International News: Several hundred thousand federal workers keep showing up at their jobs every day — screening luggage for explosives, policing prisons, preparing to open tax filing season — even though they aren’t getting paid. You wouldn’t expect that at a private company or, say, in almost any European country. But they keep reporting for work, in the midst of what is now the longest federal shutdown in United States history.

Which raises the question: Why do they keep showing up?

Lawmakers are beginning to float the idea that perhaps they shouldn’t and that some sort of coordinated absence by federal workers might be the quickest way to persuade President Trump and congressional Democrats to find a deal to end the shutdown: Workers understand the power they have; a walkout of Transportation Security Administration employees would effectively cripple air travel in the United States, for example.

But they do not appear close to wielding that leverage. On Wednesday, T.S.A. reported its national rate of...read more

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