Tell Us How the Shutdown Affected You

01/29/2019 12:30 PM | ACRAsphere Blog Team

Now that the government has reopened (until February 15 at least), federal government workers are back on the job. President Trump signed a bill that allowed direct federal employees to get back pay for the length of the shutdown – but what about contractors?

Many CRM firms interact with the federal government on a daily basis. From working on federal contracts to relying on joint federal funding for university labs, we have heard from many of you that your operations have been negatively affected in recent weeks. As of now, federal contractors are NOT guaranteed backpay for the work that they have been conducting or have lost during the shutdown. Now there is a growing effort in Washington to change that – and we need your help to try and make it happen.

We need you to share your shutdown stories with us. Were you instructed to keep working on federal projects without pay? Were you told that you could keep working on a project, but that you would have to do so without certain precautions like park rangers being on site? Was your lab shut down and students who depend on the funding for necessities like food and rent went unpaid? We want to know it all.

The more stories we have to take to Washington, the louder we will be heard by legislators. Let us know in the comments how the shutdown has affected you!


Comments

  • 01/30/2019 8:37 PM | Anonymous
    I am a federal archaeologist. This shutdown effected me directly through not getting paid (obviously) and has also impacted our program for the rest of the fiscal year. The inability of congress to pass on time appropriations (for years) has led up to this. When my agency doesn’t have a budget (not a CR!) we can’t plan effectively and we end up wasting tax payer money as a result. We can’t hire seasonals or students, we can’t approve cost shares or projects with universities for field schools, we can’t issue contracts. It’s an insane and reckless way to govern and a complete waste of time and money. We have had to cancel several important research projects already and are now six weeks behind and coming up on our busy spring field season. We are all nervous about meeting the demands of the upcoming fire season as well (I work in a western state). Several offices in my region (two states) were also broken into and thousands of dollars worth of equipment and tools were stolen. Costing even greater losses of time and money. This is sad. I love my job and love serving my country by protecting and promoting our shared history and cultural resources. Many federal workers are passionate about their work. Many contractors and subcontractors feel the same exact way. How about you get passionate about your job and find ways to allow us to continue to do ours? Pay our federal contractors. They are just as much civil servants as us federal employees, and they fulfill unique and vital work for their community, country, and resource.
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  • 02/03/2019 7:46 PM | Archaeologist in Arizona
    I oversee a program where 90% of our projects have federal funding. We were able to continue working on about half of those during the shutdown; we could only work for federal agencies that have automated invoice systems so we could get paid without my institution having to carry salaries for extended periods of time. While that kept my staff employed at about half-time, it has caused some serious problems with projects that had tight deadlines that now cannot be met after losing a month. In one case we will not be able to meet the deadline and the agency will have to accept partial deliverables (and finish the work themselves) and in two other cases we will have to request extensions but that will put us in the position of being delayed on projects scheduled for later this year, causing a domino effect. This is obviously a situation that was not necessary and could have saved a lot of people a lot of time and money.
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