LAKEWOOD, Colo. — It's been six weeks of uncertainty for federal employees around the country and across the Denver metro.
As the nation's longest government shutdown came to an end Wednesday night, Denver7 spoke with two federal employees to get their reaction about the disruption to the country. Both have been working throughout the 43-day shutdown.
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Alex Creese is a claim specialist at the Social Security Administration's field office in Aurora.
He is a steward for American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), a union representing federal workers nationwide and in Colorado.
"I'm just so glad that [the shutdown] is coming to an end, because so many people I know have had to dip into their saving," Creese told Denver7 Wednesday. "There's been so much uncertainty. We don't know what's going on."
Creese said the shutdown has caused "a hit to morale" in the workplace, but he is also grateful for "a very supportive community" around him.
"I've had to dip into my savings quite a bit in order to to pay the bills, since I haven't been paid for for a while now," he said. "It’s demoralizing, that's for sure... I know some other people have been, you know, they've taken on quite a bit of credit card debt, and they don't know if they'll be able to feed their families. Some people have been going to food banks."
Creese believes it will be a relatively smooth transition back to normal in terms of work, but he said he and others are anxiously awaiting their backpay from the six-week shutdown.
"Hopefully people can see how much of a detriment it was to the federal employees, and that hopefully, if there are shutdowns in the future, they won't last nearly as long," he said.
Denver7 also spoke with Miles Batson about federal workers' anxiety at the beginning of the shutdown.
He is a chemist with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), working at the Denver Federal Center campus in Lakewood.
Batson is the executive Vice President of AFGE Council 238, a union group that represents thousands of federal workers across the region.
Now at the shutdown's end, Batson said there is "a mixture of gratitude and frustration," and he feels federal workers were used as "political pawns."
"Kind of feels like we didn't get anything out of this," he said.
Batson said the Federal Center campus gradually became more empty as the shutdown wore on, and that it was "awkward" going to work and still receiving a paycheck while most others did not.
"It was very confusing, because they didn't let us know where the funding was coming from for our payroll," he said. "I'm glad I got paid, but I don't know where exactly that money came from."
Batson believes it will take "a while" for work to return to normal.
"You can't just stop for a month of work and imagine that you can just pick it up and do all the back work and get back to it," he said. "Do we have to delay future work, in order to take this time to go back and complete what we should have completed already? I imagine it's going to be confusing and difficult."
Batson said he hopes federal workers receive more appreciation for the "vital" work they do for the government and the American people.
"Public service sometimes gets a bad rep, of like people just sitting in offices for 30 years and turning out, but people in the Federal Center are actually really, really engaged in what they do, and engage in the missions of their agencies," he explained.
"I very much enjoy the job I do. I think I protect the environment, protect human health, and I want to do it every day. But to be caught in a political game on the regular, to see your colleagues — and maybe me next time — have to go furloughed without a paycheck, it just makes it difficult to be an employee, you know, period. Whether this was private industry or the government."
And he said short-term clarity may not mean much long-term. The funding bill approved and signed into law Wednesday night only funds the government through January.
"Honestly, I'm a little scared," Batson said. "The idea that, ‘Oh, my work might stop because our two political parties won't agree,’ is, you know, a good bet to make three months from now, I'd say."
