Following the longest shutdown in U.S. history, the federal workforce is now trying to get back to at least some sense of normalcy.

While federal employees who have been furloughed for the last 43 days return to work Thursday, the Office of Personnel Management is setting expectations for agencies as they begin to update pay, leave and benefits for those impacted by the lapse in appropriations.

In new guidance, OPM said it is “is committed to ensuring that retroactive pay is provided as soon as possible.” Compensation will be provided for both furloughed and excepted federal employees, as the spending agreement that was enacted Wednesday evening reaffirmed. A 2019 law previously called for retroactive compensation for all federal employees impacted by a shutdown.

A senior Trump administration official said the White House “has urged agencies to get employee paychecks out expeditiously and accurately to not leave anyone waiting longer than necessary.”

But the timing of employees receiving their back pay varies, depending on what payroll provider an agency uses, and the different pay schedules across the federal workforce.

Sending out retroactive payments to employees involves working across agency HR offices, federal payroll providers and shared service centers. Agency HR offices, for instance, have to submit timecards for federal employees, which are then processed by the government’s various payroll providers.

According to the senior administration official, employees from the General Services Administration and OPM will be among the first to receive their retroactive paychecks, with an expected deposit date set for Saturday.

Employees at the departments of Veterans Affairs, Energy, and Health and Human Services, as well as civilian employees from the Defense Department, will receive their deposits shortly after that — this Sunday.

On Monday, affected employees from the departments of Education, State, Interior and Transportation, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency, National Science Foundation, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Social Security Administration and NASA, are all expected to receive their back pay.

Then on Wednesday, employees from the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Treasury, Labor and Justice, along with the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Small Business Administration, are projected to get their paychecks. The timing of the retroactive payments for feds was first reported by Semafor.

The National Finance Center, a payroll provider housed under the Agriculture Department, confirmed that employees at agencies using NFC’s services should expect a payroll deposit by the middle of next week.

“In order to provide backpay for employees as quickly as possible, the National Finance Center will be expediting pay processing for pay period 22 and backpay for pay periods 19 (October 1-4), 20 (October 5-18), and 21 (October 19-November 1),” USDA wrote in an all-staff email Wednesday evening, obtained by Federal News Network.

Federal News Network has reached out to several other federal payroll providers requesting details on the timeline for processing retroactive payments.

The National Treasury Employees Union urged immediate back pay for all federal employees who have been going without compensation for the last six weeks.

“This is an emergency for federal employees across the country, and they should not have to wait another minute longer for the paychecks they lost during the longest government shutdown in history,” NTEU National President Doreen Greenwald said. “We call on all federal agencies to process the back pay immediately.”

In its new guidance, OPM also noted that to make payments as quickly as possible, payroll providers may need to “make some adjustments.” That could mean, for instance, that the initial retroactive payments employees receive might not reflect the exact calculations of their pay and leave hours.

“Payroll providers will work with agencies to make any necessary adjustments as soon as practicable,” OPM said.

Who receives back pay, and how much?

Furloughed employees will receive their “standard rate of pay” for the hours they would have worked if the government shutdown hadn’t occurred, OPM said in its guidance Wednesday evening.

But there are some exceptions to that. If a furloughed employee, for example, had been scheduled for overtime hours that would have occurred during the shutdown, OPM said they should be paid their premium rate for those hours.

Additionally, OPM said that allowances, differentials and other types of payments, like administratively uncontrollable overtime pay or law enforcement availability pay, should be paid as if the furloughed employee continued to work.

Although most employees impacted by the shutdown are ensured back pay, there are some smaller exceptions carved out where employees may not receive retroactive pay, OPM added.

If a furloughed employee was in a non-pay status before the shutdown began, for instance, then they are not entitled to receive back pay.

Excepted employees who were considered “absent without leave” (AWOL) — or in other words, took unapproved time off — will also not receive back pay for that time.

Guidance on leave, post-shutdown

Although excepted employees are not required to use paid leave for taking time off during the shutdown — and can instead enter a “furlough” period — there may still have been some instances where excepted employees took leave during the funding lapse, OPM wrote in its guidance.

In those cases, excepted employees who were approved to take paid leave during the shutdown will be charged for the hours from their leave bank, OPM said.

Agencies are also expected to begin adjusting leave accrual for furloughed employees. Now that the shutdown is over, furloughed employees should be placed in a “pay status” for the time they would have otherwise spent working during the funding lapse. That means accrual of annual and sick leave will be retroactively adjusted as if the employees were in a pay status, OPM said.

Excepted employees continued to accrue leave during the shutdown, which should be reflected in their leave banks, OPM said.

What happens to RIFs of federal employees?

On top of reaffirming back pay, the spending bill that was enacted Wednesday evening also rescinds the roughly 4,000 reductions in force that have occurred since Oct. 1. Federal employees will be temporarily protected from additional RIFs, at least until the end of January.

Agencies have five days to inform federal employees who received RIF notices in October that those actions are rescinded.

“Agencies should issue those notices and confirm to OPM the rescissions have been issued,” OPM’s guidance states.

At least 670,000 federal employees have been furloughed, and 730,000 employees have been working without pay during the shutdown. Agencies have been putting plans in the works to return all furloughed federal employees to their duties as of Thursday.

OPM also said agencies “may consider” providing flexibility for employees who might not be able to return to work immediately, such as by approving personal leave or adjusting individual work schedules.

The post Post-shutdown, here’s how soon federal employees can expect back pay first appeared on Federal News Network.

The Social Security Administration is considering whether to put more of its in-person services on hold, as employees working without pay during the longest government shutdown can no longer afford the cost of coming into the office.

SSA’s Chief of Field Operations Andy Sriubas told managers on a call Thursday afternoon that the agency may need to stop issuing replacement Social Security cards, if the shutdown continues, given concerns about short staffing.

Several managers also told Sriubas, in a recording of the call obtained by Federal News Network, that some field office employees working without pay are asking to be furloughed, because they can no longer cover commuting costs.

Many federal employees have missed two full paychecks during the shutdown, and received one partial paycheck.

“If this goes into next week, I asked folks to start thinking about what are the workloads … we’re just not doing that, going forward, until the shutdown ends,” Sriubas said.

Depending on when Congress reaches a deal to end the shutdown, it’s possible that SSA employees receive a partial paycheck before receiving the rest of their retroactive pay.

Replacement Social Security cards are one of the biggest reasons individuals show up at Social Security offices. Last year, about 7.7 million people requested replacement cards. The agency stopped issuing replacement Social Security cards in previous shutdowns.

Much of SSA’s workforce is considered “excepted” and continues working without pay during a shutdown. But Sriubas said the agency may need to scale back some shutdown-exempt services if the shutdown lasts much longer.

“Just because it’s an excepted workload doesn’t mean we have to do it. So we can decide not to do it,” he told managers.

SSA was planning to launch its new appointment scheduling system in January. But Sriubas said the rollout has been pushed back by about six weeks because of the shutdown.

An SSA spokesperson told Federal News Network that “Social Security Administration continues to serve our nation’s seniors and most vulnerable populations during the Democrat shutdown.”

“We recognize this is a stressful and challenging time for SSA employees who are currently working without pay because the Democrats won’t reopen the government,” the spokesperson said.

Senate Democrats on Friday proposed voting for a continuing resolution to end the shutdown, in exchange for a one-year extension of Affordable Care Act tax credits. But Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) called the plan a “nonstarter.”

‘They won’t be able to afford to work at the agency’

One manager said during the call that employees can no longer afford commuting costs, including filling up their cars to drive to work. Others are asking to be furloughed, so that they can take second jobs to pay their bills.

“Pretty soon, they won’t be able to afford to work at the agency,” the manager said.

SSA required all employees to work fully on-site beginning in March, because of President Donald Trump’s return-to-office orders for the federal workforce. But there is still a possibility, at times, for employees to get approval for “episodic telework,” a shorter-term option when unexpected personal circumstances arise.

Sriubas said teleworking five days a week is still prohibited, and that managers can furlough staff for the remainder of the shutdown, so that they don’t have to spend any money to come into the office.

“That’s, unfortunately, the only option we have,” he said.

The American Federation of Government Employees, which represents about 42,000 SSA employees nationwide, is calling on SSA to allow more routine telework during the shutdown.

If enough SSA employees request furlough status, some offices may need to be temporarily closed.

SSA closed two of its 1,250 field offices on Monday due to limited staffing. An agency spokesperson said one of the offices reopened for normal operations on Tuesday. Sriubas told managers that more offices may be at risk of temporary closures, if the shutdown drags on.

“I understand that that’s going to happen, and nobody wants to close an office. You guys are all captains of your ship, and everybody wants to make sure that that’s never going to happen. But I also understand that people have to live their lives, and they have limited means to do that when you’re now missing your second full paycheck,” he said. “So if putting people on furlough is the only thing you can do, if it’s the best thing for the employee, that’s what we’re going to have to do.”

Some managers said employees are frustrated, because they want to keep working during the shutdown, but are financially squeezed and unable to telework.

“We do have employees that have been embarrassed to come to me and say that they can’t afford to come to work, and they want to telework instead of being furloughed, and I understand that’s not an option,” another manager said. “There really are people that are struggling with the decision between finding a way to get to work, and wanting to work, and our only option is being furloughed.”

Other managers said employees are scared to go on furlough, because the Trump administration has floated the possibility that furloughed staff will not receive back pay once the shutdown ends.

“I have employees that are skeptical and kind of scared, to be truthful, to use furlough because they’re not comfortable or confident that once the shutdown is over, that they’re going to be compensated if they were on a furlough status,” a third manager said.

Sriubas acknowledged the administration has created uncertainty around back pay for furloughed employees, but said it would be “political suicide for either the Republican or the Democrat party to suggest that they wouldn’t support paying the people that were on furlough during this whole process.”

“Rumors in the press are just simply that — rumors in the press. In the past, everybody has gotten paid, and it is expected that most likely everybody will get paid who’s on furlough. But, you don’t know, it’s not 100% and I appreciate people are nervous to go on furlough because of that — because that risk that they wouldn’t get paid,” he said.

During the shutdown, SSA has paused work on some mandated work with benchmarks set by Congress. That includes continuing disability reviews (CDRs) and redetermination for Supplemental Security Income (RZs).

The former involves SSA reviewing the medical records of those receiving disability benefits, and determining whether they are still disabled. The latter involves the agency reviewing non-medical factors — like income and resources — to determine if individuals should remain on disability benefits.

Congress mandated SSA to complete 2.4 million redeterminations for Supplemental Security Income and 400,000 continuing disability reviews last year. Sriubas said SSA will work on resetting its workload targets once the shutdown ends.

“I fully appreciate that we’re not going to be able to deliver what we thought we were going to deliver when we looked like we had a 12-month year to be able to go do that stuff,” he said.

A fourth manager said during the call that it is “hard to keep morale going,” and that employees know that “as soon as the shutdown is over, we’re going to hit them hard” with a backlog of casework.

“It’s very frustrating when we have to keep those staff motivated — and we need them for the long haul. Not just for this fiscal year, the next fiscal year,” the manager said.

Sriubas said the agency will offer overtime to employees to dig out from the backlog. SSA managers were also told during the call that once the shutdown ends, the agency will work with the Interior Department — which handles payroll for a wide swath of the federal workforce — to ensure excepted employees receive retroactive pay “as quickly as possible.”

The post Social Security considers pausing more work, as shutdown takes a toll on employees first appeared on Federal News Network.