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Federal workers protest 'absurd' government shutdown at RDU

About a dozen federal workers protested Wednesday at Raleigh-Durham International Airport to call for an end to the ongoing partial government shutdown.

Posted Updated

By
Laura Leslie
, WRAL Capitol Bureau chief
MORRISVILLE, N.C. — About a dozen federal workers protested Wednesday at Raleigh-Durham International Airport to call for an end to the ongoing partial government shutdown.

The American Federation of Government Employees, which represents 700,000 federal and Washington, D.C., government workers, organized the small demonstration outside Terminal 2.

"My car insurance was due three weeks ago," said Tangela Campbell, who works for the Transportation Security Administration at RDU. "I borrowed money to put gas in my car to get to work."

Campbell, a single mother with a teenage son at home, said she loves her job, but she'll miss her second straight paycheck on Friday, which makes finances at home tight.

"The issue is not continuing to come do my job. The issue is trying to live after I finish my shift," she said.

The Raleigh-Durham Airport Authority has been supportive of the TSA workers, and local residents and businesses have stepped up to donate food to the strapped workers. But Campbell said that's not enough.

"We need our checks to live," she said. "We appreciate all the help and support, but we need our money."

TSA employees and other so-called "essential" workers who have been handling shifts unpaid for the last month will get back pay after the shutdown is over.

But Keisha Handy, who like Campbell gave up her lunch hour to stage the protest, said back pay sometime down the road doesn't put food on the table now.

"I've had to call and talk to a lot of my creditors to either delay my payments or to cut my payments in half. It has definitely impacted my household," Handy said, "End the shutdown. People are going without pay. People are working for free."

TSA workers at many airports around the country have been calling out sick instead of working without pay. So far, RDU hasn't seen unusually high call-out rates among its TSA staff.

CNN on Tuesday obtained an email from TSA officials asking for employees to move from their home airports to airports struggling with low staffing.

Kam Krebs, who works for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, said he hasn't been required to work during the shutdown, but being out of the office for several weeks has disrupted his research into air pollution.

Mac Johnson, president of AFGE Local #0449, said morale is declining daily among his fellow federal workers.

"I think it's embarrassing that the government of the United States of America has employees coming to work – now entering its fifth week – and not getting paid. I think that's absurd," Johnson said.

A military veteran who commutes from Fayetteville to work for the TSA, he said he finds it more difficult to visit his grandchildren in Oxford.

"The little ones, they love Chuck E. Cheese's. Papaw can't take them to Chuck E. Cheese's because I've got to watch my spending," Johnson said.

Parts of the federal government have been shut down since Dec. 22 as President Donald Trump and congressional Democrats fight over the president's demand for $5.7 billion in federal funding to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border to address what he has called an immigration crisis.

The union is calling on the U.S. Senate to approve the Republican spending bill that already passed the House and send it to the president's desk. The bill would reopen the government while talks about the border wall continue.

So far, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has refused to allow the measure to come up for a vote.

Data from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management show more than 44,000 civilian federal employees worked in North Carolina as of June 2018, the most recent data available. The state ranks 12th in the county among federal employment, just behind Ohio.

The bulk of North Carolina's federal civilian workers are employed by agencies not affected by the shutdown, such the departments of Veterans Affairs, Defense, Army, Navy and Air Force. Almost 34,000 people in the state are employed by those agencies. The data does not include government contractors.

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