Near the shuttered Liberty Bell, Philadelphia union leaders and lawmakers rally against the government shutdown

Standing at Fifth and Market Streets, elected officials and union leaders gathered to protest the government shutdown on Tuesday, which has closed local national landmarks, like the Liberty Bell Center, required federal employees to continue working without pay, and has resulted in flight delays across some cities amid a “slight tick up” in air traffic controllers calling in sick.

Some on Tuesday called it a “Republican shutdown” and called it “unnecessary,” expressing frustration at the impact it’s having on federal workers.

“When workers’ rights are under attack, what do we do?” called out Danny Bauder, president of the Philadelphia Council AFL-CIO, to a response from the crowd of, “Stand up. Fight back!”

Philadelphia-area representatives of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the largest federal workers’ union, and the AFL-CIO hosted Tuesday’s rally.

Some in attendance held signs that read, “Public service is a badge of honor,” and “Government workers work for America.”

Republican and Democratic lawmakers on Capitol Hill have continued to fail to reach a deal to reopen the government. Democrats want healthcare subsidies and the reversal of Medicaid cuts included in the plan to fund the government, but Republicans say that’s a nonstarter.

Several votes attempting to end the shutdown since last Wednesday have been unsuccessful, with only a few Democratic lawmakers crossing the aisle to vote with the GOP.

Philadelphia-area union leaders who spoke to The Inquirer last week expressed frustration at lawmakers’ inability to come to an agreement and have been concerned about the financial impacts of the shutdown on federal employees. They’ve also been worried about threats from the Trump administration to lay off employees in addition to the typical furloughs during a shutdown.

“This administration now is gonna tell workers we can’t get a budget together, we can’t get a funding bill together, we can’t negotiate, but we’re gonna send federal employees home, and then we’re gonna fire them,” said Philip Glover, national vice president of AFGE District 3, which includes Pennsylvania. “This is wrong. It’s unacceptable. We have got to fight back against this extreme ideology of this administration. They need to negotiate.”

During the shutdown, some employees, like at the Internal Revenue Service and the Environmental Protection Agency, have been working with borrowed time, operating with residual funds or ones outside the appropriations process.

Meanwhile, excepted employees, including at the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Social Security Administration, the Transportation Security Administration, and the Federal Bureau of Prisons, are directed to work without pay during the shutdown.

“You gotta pay to come into work every day, to park, put gas in your car, and you’re not gonna get a full paycheck. It’s unacceptable, and we are sick of it,” Glover said.

Those workers and furloughed employees are entitled to back pay at the end of a shutdown — as outlined in a 2019 law — but the Trump administration’s Office of Management and Budget deleted a reference to this law in its shutdown guidance, multiple news outlets reported Tuesday.

AFGE National President Everett Kelly said in a statement Tuesday that OMB’s position is “an obvious misinterpretation of the law” and does not align with the Trump administration’s previous guidance from a few days ago that correctly states furloughed and excepted employees are entitled to back pay.

U.S. Reps. Brendan Boyle, Mary Gay Scanlon, and Dwight Evans, Democrats whose districts include parts of Philadelphia, said Tuesday that in order to bring the shutdown to an end, there needs to be negotiation between both political parties.

Boyle, the ranking Democrat on the House Budget Committee, called this particular shutdown “unique” and “odd,” noting that there were ongoing negotiations during past shutdowns, but this week House Speaker Mike Johnson sent members home from session “while federal workers have to continue to show up day in and day out at their jobs while they’re not getting paid.”

“You know who federal workers are?” Boyle asked the crowd Tuesday. “They’re fellow American citizens. They’re our neighbors. They’re our friends. They’re the folks who help make this place run. They’re the folks who make our airports run. I am sick and tired of them being demonized by this administration and being portrayed as the enemy. They are not.”

The impacts of the shutdown are starting to become apparent at Philadelphia International Airport. On Monday, more TSA employees at PHL, who are essential workers, were late or calling out than usual, said Joe Shuker, Region 7 vice president for AFGE Council 100, which oversees Pennsylvania.

“I don’t know if I’d fly now,” he said on Tuesday.

The federal shutdown also comes as Pennsylvania hasn’t yet reached a deal on its own budget, creating simultaneous dysfunction on both the state and national levels.

The government shutdown is just the latest workplace disruption that federal employees have experienced this year. Since taking office, the Trump administration has issued a hiring freeze, canceled remote work, orchestrated mass layoffs, and stripped unions of their collective bargaining agreements, amid a plan to shrink and reshape the federal workforce.