The longest government shutdown in U.S. history ended last week, paving the way for federal employees to return to their posts, including many in Alaska’s capital city. But reopening is not necessarily a smooth process, and some agency workers say they are frustrated.
After 43 days without work or pay, Don MacDougall got a text from his boss Wednesday evening telling him to come back to the office the next morning. Walking out of the federal building downtown on Friday afternoon, he said it felt strange to go without work for that long, knowing that eventually he’ll be paid for the lost time.
“It seems kind of senseless,” MacDougall said. “Then when you come back, you’re overloaded with all the work that you didn’t get to do before you left and stuff that’s built up.”
He’s a program coordinator at the U.S. Forest Service. He works on projects involving workforce development, volunteers and recreation across Alaska. He said he has hundreds of emails to sift through.
“It’s just been a frustrating time,” MacDougall said.
Eric Antrim said reopening has been disorganized. He manages bridge inspections in Alaska’s national forests and he’s the recording secretary for his union, the National Federation of Federal Employees Local 251.
He said some furloughed employees, not knowing how long the shutdown would last, left town and weren’t available to return on such short notice. But Antrim said leadership in his office is being flexible as workers come back.
“People are everywhere,” he said. “One of my colleagues is in Antarctica right now.”
Antrim spent part of his unpaid furlough organizing free lunches for federal workers. Now, he said he’s expecting a paycheck within the next week.
“Whenever that comes through, I should get one giant lump sum payment for, you know, three pay periods at the same time,” he said.
In 2019, Congress passed a law that guarantees back pay for federal workers as soon as possible after a government shutdown ends. The bill Congress passed Wednesday affirms that guarantee, despite comments that President Donald Trump made last month.
Back at the federal building, as workers returned from lunch, Jaimie Rountree said she was mandated to work without pay during the shutdown. But she said that wasn’t the case for everyone in her department at U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
“So there are a handful of us that weren’t getting paid while we were sitting in an office watching others get paid,” Rountree said. “Humiliating, disrespectful, unfair.”
She’s an agriculture specialist officer and said she had to stay at her post because it’s considered essential for national security. Rountree processes people coming in on mining barges, cruise ships and aircraft who intend to stay in the U.S.
She said she feels unsure about the future.
“You just don’t know,” Rountree said. “I mean, there’s things happening nowadays that you never thought would happen.”