MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — The largest union representing federal government workers, the American Federation of Government Employees, is calling for Democrats to agree to a clean continuing resolution to reopen the government.
For the last four weeks of the federal government shutdown, AFGE Local 420 members working at Federal Correctional Institution Hazelton in Preston County have remained on the job. AFGE Regional Vice President Rick Heldreth said this is the fourth shutdown over the last decade and his members understand the rules.
“You have to have a certain number of people to run an institution, and they have to go to work,” Heldreth said on MetroNews “Talkline.” “Everybody that works there is a law enforcement officer, and they’re essential employees who don’t have the option of not coming in.”
Heldreth said the AFGE represents about 800,000 people who work for the federal government and are asking the Democrats to agree to a continuing resolution to reopen the government.
“They don’t want either side to use them as a tool to push any type of legislation,” Heldreth said. “They want to go to work, do their job, get paid, and serve the American people like they were hired to do.”
The shutdown could be the single incident that would drive many of the workers from the prison. This is in addition to low staffing levels, the loss of retention incentives, and an attempt by the government to ignore their collective bargaining rights.
“They work paycheck-to-paycheck—they don’t have a ton of money in the bank,” Heldreth said. “There’s only a certain amount of time they can go on when something like this happens before they have to start looking elsewhere for something to pay their bills.”
Months ago when West Virginia native Billy Marshal. was named to lead the Federal Bureau of Prisons, Heldreth hoped for some positive change from the fellow West Virginian. Instead, Marshal has worked to silence the rank and file and stopped hiring additional officers to stop practices like mandatory overtime.
“We already had a staffing crisis, and the first thing he did was freeze hiring and take away the retention incentives that were stemming the flow of lost officers—we were keeping our heads above water,” Heldreth said. “It’s just been downhill ever since.”
The political fight is completely lost on Heldreth and his members. He said they aren’t concerned about who wins a debate in Washington, DC, while their families struggle to make ends meet.
“To me, it’s never mattered if they were a “D” or an “R”,” Heldreth said. “It’s whether they want to support our staff to get pepper spray, stab vests, and get more staffing—those are the things that really matter.”