Shutdown Puts ‘Essential’ U.S. Workers in Bind

In normal times, Shirley Smith is the queen bee in the hive of activity that is the Labor Department’s Office of Worker Retraining and Adjustment Programs.

From her U-shaped work space, hidden by heaps of folders, memos and other documents spilling to the floor, she manages a $200-million budget to provide discretionary assistance to people who have lost their jobs.

But these are not normal times. On Thursday, the 13th day of the federal government’s shutdown, Smith’s office was a ghost town at the end of a fifth-floor canyon of vacant rooms. Members of her staff were furloughed against their will and she was left alone, unable to do anything constructive without them.

“I’m so frustrated,” she said. “I have work to do but I can’t do anything until my staff returns.

“If and when they return, we will have more demands than we can possibly handle. Until then, I can only plan for their return,” she said.

Such is the lot of federal managers, many of whom are on the job as the shutdown stretches into a third week because they have been deemed to be “essential” government employees. Without manpower and money, managers such as Smith make up a bare-bones federal bureaucracy, however. They are at their posts answering phones, providing counsel and comfort to anyone who needs government assistance. But they are unable to provide basic government services.

“I’m working my butt off but I’m not sure I’m accomplishing a lot,” said David Longanecker, assistant secretary for post-secondary education at the Department of Education.

Describing his job during the shutdown as “treading water,” Longanecker said that he is unable to provide the services the public expects from the federal government, such as inquiries into student loan programs or approval for college- and graduate school-related programs.

“I’m answering the phones trying to help people--who legitimately deserve an answer to their questions--understand why they can’t get an answer,” he said.

As another Education Department official said: “I don’t know how much managing is getting done. I’m sitting here in the dark on an empty floor with my fingers in the dike.”

According to estimates by the Office of Management and Budget, about 280,000 employees in nine Cabinet departments and 38 agencies, commissions and boards have been sent home.

About 480,000 federal employees are working through the shutdown, many of them classified as “essential” employees or workers in departments whose fiscal 1996 budgets have been approved by Congress and the president.

Smith spends most of her time on the telephone. At the top of her list are calls to each of the seven women and three men who make up her team, trying to keep them informed. She’s had precious little to report.

“My staff is worried about what’s going to happen to them in the future and I don’t have anything to tell them,” she said. “There is anxiety about the future of our program in one, two or three years. . . . Some of them have told me they are depressed and concerned.”

Other calls come from state government officials--such as one this week from an overwrought Texas government worker who demanded Smith’s full attention for several minutes. Smith tried repeatedly to explain that there was little the federal government could do until the budget shutdown ends.

“You know we’re on furlough up here,” she said at one point. “I am the skeleton staff.”

After a few minutes, as the Texan apparently pleaded for more and quicker federal help, Smith ended the call with a promise that as soon as the federal government solves its problems, her department will provide any assistance it can to displaced workers in Texas. The caller, Smith explained after hanging up the phone, “can’t do her job because I can’t do my job. She’s getting the blues from her boss because people need our assistance and they just don’t understand why our work isn’t getting done. They’re frustrated and I’m frustrated.”

Typically, state officials respond to plant closings or massive layoffs in their jurisdictions by requesting financial help from the secretary of Labor, who passes the grant request to Smith’s office. In the best of times, it would have been possible to push the Texan’s grant request through within a few days.

Just before the government shutdown, Smith’s office was processing about 16 grant requests from 12 states and Guam that would help more than 7,000 American workers who lost jobs. Some of those requests are coordinated with the Department of Defense to assist military and civilian employees affected by reductions in the armed forces and base closings.

“We have the money to give out,” Smith said. It was approved by Congress last summer. “But I don’t have the staff to write the grant award letter.”

Knowing that the government cannot do what it should to help needy people has made these days “the most demoralizing of my career,” she said. The solitude of her huge office also reminds her of how thankless public service jobs can be.

“To hear some people talk about federal workers, it makes me feel lower than a welfare cheat,” she said. “I sit here sometimes and think: ‘What’s going on in this country? Why are they doing this?’ ”

At times, her concerns border on fear of the unknown--both psychological and physical. A self-described workaholic, she has tried to maintain her 10-hour daily routine, arriving at her desk every workday since the Dec. 16 shutdown by 9 a.m. and leaving late in the evening.

When the office is functioning normally, late nights and weekend work are typical. In the bustle, she never seemed to notice the sounds of whirring office computers or rumbling heating ducts. Now she does.

“Normally, I work into the night,” she said. “But when the sun goes down and it’s dark outside, everything in here is creaking and clanking. It’s just creepy. That’s when I decide it’s time to go home.”