Gov. Jay Inslee announced today that he is extending state unemployment benefits to federal workers who are currently working without pay. Inslee’s office said the measure will cover “TSA agents, Coast Guard personnel, border patrol agents, food safety inspectors, FBI agents.”
In a post on Medium—Inslee’s preferred blogging platform—Inslee estimated that there are 16,000 federal employees in Washington currently missing paychecks. The state has already been giving unemployment benefits to people who were furloughed from work and told to wait at home until the government reopens. His announcement today means even those people who have been forced to stay at work without pay will now also receive unemployment. The governor did not estimate how many people would be covered in his announcement.
“It is unconscionable that the president is turning these public servants into his political pawns. We will take care of Washingtonians, even if the president won’t,” Inslee said in his announcement.
Meanwhile in D.C., Mitch McConnell, that turtle devil Senator from Kentucky who controls the Senate, finally allowed the upper house of Congress to vote on legislation that would reopen the government. Both bills failed to receive enough votes on Thursday afternoon. That means the federal shutdown, now in its 33rd day, will continue to break records while federal workers (and increasingly the larger economy) will continue to feel the pain.
My colleague Nathalie Graham has been running The Stranger‘s Federal Shutdown Desk and has documented how the shutdown has affected TSA agents, who are already some of the lowest paid workers in the federal workforce. She’s also talked with Coast Guard families about how the shutdown has forced the federal employees to start delivering food for GrubHub.
Hopefully Inslee’s move helps these federal employees.
