DoD has issued a department-wide memo on shutdown preparations stressing to employees who would stand to be furloughed that their status is not a reflection on their performance or their value to their organization, but rather a matter of legal policies regarding which positions must remain staffed during a government funding lapse.
The memo was issued Friday, the same day as the way seemed to be cleared to avoid a shutdown through votes early this week to continue agency funding through mid-December. Those votes still need to be finalized, however.
“Prudent management requires that we continue to prepare for all contingencies, including the possibility that a government shutdown could occur,” it says. It notes that as at all agencies, certain employees would be excepted from a furlough because the job involves protection of property, public safety and health. Those employees would remain on the job unpaid and would be guaranteed to be paid for that time when funding is restored; furloughed employees would be sent home unpaid with no guarantee of pay for that time, although in prior shutdowns they have been paid.
Said the memo: “Importantly, the categorization of employees and whether or not someone is furloughed is not a reflection on the quality of an employee’s work, nor of his or her importance to the department. It is merely a reflection of the legal requirements that we must uperate under should a lapse in appropriations occur.”
“The uncertainty of the current circumstances puts our workforce in a difficult situation, and should a government shutdown occur, it could impose hardships on many employees as well as the people we serve every day. We will work closely with all staff to do our best to support you through this period,” the memo adds.
In the 2013 shutdown, DoD initially furloughed about 400,000 of its roughly 750,000 civilian employees, although within a week it called back the large majority of those after Congress passed a law to assure that military personnel were paid on time and that they had operational support.
