'Using us as political pawns': federal workers reel over threats of firings and withheld back pay

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Source: The Guardian

Sun 12 Oct 2025 06.00 EDT
Last modified on Sun 12 Oct 2025 06.02 EDT


With no end of the federal government shutdown in sight, an estimated 750,000 workers remain furloughed. Hundreds of thousands more are working without pay. They are being “held hostage by a political dispute”, according to union leaders, as Republicans and Democrats remain deadlocked.

In the Oval Office on Tuesday, Donald Trump suggested that furloughed employees would not necessarily receive back pay – despite a legal guarantee – prompting further unease throughout the federal workforce. “There are some people that don’t deserve to be taken care of, and we’ll take care of them in a different way,” the US president said. The administration, meanwhile, continues to threaten mass firings if Democrats stand by their demands. “If this keeps going on, it’ll be substantial,” Trump told reporters. “And a lot of those jobs will never come back.”

On Friday, Russell Vought, the White House office of management and budget (OMB) director, announced on social media that layoffs had begun. Several federal agencies started announcing layoffs, but details remained scant on how many workers would be impacted. After a brutal year for the federal workforce, employees who spoke to the Guardian expressed growing anxiety over their pay – and the future of their jobs.

“This is the third time I’ve been furloughed in my federal career,” said Priscilla Novak, a furloughed federal employee researcher. “But this is the first time there were threats of having people be fired en masse. I’ve been checking my email every day to see if I’m fired yet.” “Even before the shutdown, it’s just kind of been one thing after another for us,” said Peter Farruggia, a furloughed employee at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). “I think a lot of us are expecting the worst, hoping for the best.”

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/12/federal-workers-firings-threats