After a long, hard won battle for worker’s rights over corporations, FDR signed the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) in 1938. The law outlaws child labor, sets overtime at time-and-a-half over 40 hours, and also requires employers to pay at least minimum wages in a timely manner.
In the 2013 Ted Cruz 16 day government shutdown, 1.3 million federal workers were required to continue working in early October with unknown paycheck dates. Most of those, including Coast Guard and National Parks employees had their funding promptly approved and also received back pay quickly. Over 200,000 workers had their pay delayed while working for up to five days without a paycheck.
A class action lawsuit was eventually filed, mainly by prison workers, and by the 2015 deadline over 25,000 eligible workers had opted into the suit. In 2017, the final judgement was for damages amounting to “double pay” for the hours worked but “pegged to the minimum wage”.
Ironically, the Wage & Hour Division within the Dept. of Labor responsible for wrapping up these claims is not currently processing them, due to… you guessed it… the current government shutdown (hat-tip to John in Denver).
Getting underpaid workers to sign up for a class action lawsuit, with unknown chance of success for unknown benefits at some unknown point in the future, isn’t easy, and waiting for years for compensation certainly doesn’t help the immediate problems of food, shelter, medicine, etc. People have to move on with their lives and are often unaware of their rights. It’s a sad fact that the most vulnerable workers will not fully recover from how Trump’s shutdown disrupted their lives.
But workers have rights, thanks to Progressive Democratic policies, and the Trump shutdown is clearly an illegal act against many Americans who serve in our government. Similar FLSA violations (delaying paychecks) have resulted in criminal referrals against employers.
Wilbur Ross and other members of the Trump administration may not understand what it is like to live from paycheck to paycheck, but most Americans do. And these workers are being treated unjustly and cruelly by Trump. Being told to go back to work without knowing when you’ll be paid isn’t “volunteering” support for the corrupt Trumps, it’s illegal wage theft. And the affected people working during this shutdown should sue for damages, because the legal precedent has already been set that the government cannot treat its workers like this. The shutdown is illegal.