The secretary of transportation warned on Monday that air traffic controllers should expect to stop getting a paycheck next week as the government shutdown continues, despite the White House’s top budget official hinting earlier that the Trump administration was looking for ways to pay them.
Speaking on Fox News, Sean Duffy, the transportation secretary, was unequivocal in warning that “there will be no dollars” in controllers’ next paychecks, which are expected to be issued a week from Tuesday, stating: “They don’t get paid.”
Air traffic controllers are one of several groups of federal employees required to work without pay through a government shutdown, because their jobs are considered essential to public safety. Under a 2019 law, they are entitled to back pay once Congress agrees on a bill to fund the federal government again, but administration officials and lawmakers have expressed deep concerns about forcing them to work without pay until then.
Controllers have already received one reduced check, because the shutdown began in the middle of a pay period. The next pay date, Oct. 28, will be the first fully missed paycheck.
Many controllers have already been laboring in understaffed facilities and pulling overtime shifts to compensate for severe staffing shortages. Mr. Duffy said on Monday that he was concerned the flying public might start experiencing disruptions in air travel as controllers’ paychecks are reduced to nothing. He warned that those who live paycheck to paycheck will have to start “figuring out ways to keep their families afloat.”
His comments suggested that any efforts to identify funds that could be reprogrammed to cover air traffic controllers’ salaries had thus far come up empty.
Russ Vought, the White House’s budget director, suggested on “The Charlie Kirk Show” last Wednesday that the administration was looking for funds to ensure that certain federal workers, including air traffic controllers, could be paid through the shutdown. Earlier this month, the administration reprogrammed funds to cover the paychecks of more than one million active-duty military, moving $8 billion in unspent research funds to cover paychecks that went out on Oct. 15.
Mr. Vought likened that process to “playing budgetary Twister to find a pot of money that has a similar purpose that we can pay them,” adding: “We don’t want air traffic control to start staying home sick.”
It is unclear, however, what funds might be available to cover such salaries, without an act of Congress. This week, the Senate is expected to vote on a bill that would restore the salaries of federal workers required to work without pay through the shutdown — including air traffic controllers — but it is unclear whether it will secure enough votes to pass.
Missed work by air traffic controllers is widely credited with hastening the end of the last federal shutdown, which lasted a full 34 days, in 2019. But the controllers’ union has strenuously rejected that narrative, and experts, congressional aides and contemporary news reports say it has been overblown.
Last week, Mr. Duffy appeared to be playing hardball with controllers, warning that he could fire “problem children” who missed shifts during the shutdown. On Monday, he struck a more compassionate tone, thanking controllers for reporting to work, even as some, he said, were having to take on side hustles in order to bridge the gap.
“They’re doing great work,” he added.
Karoun Demirjian is a breaking news reporter for The Times.
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