The 4 million or so federal contractors, about 1,000 of whom rely on work from NASA Ames, have no such guarantee. The 800,000 federal employees who are either furloughed or forced to work without pay are entitled to recover lost wages. It’s day 34 of the longest government shutdown-by far-in U.S. “So they’re trying to work things out, too. “When I called at 11 one day, by the time I was off hold, it was 12:30, and the woman on the line said she was working overtime to take my call,” recounts Misty Davies, a 43-year-old aerospace engineer who spent the better part of her past decade in federal employ at NASA Ames. The next step involves punting the application to another division, which verifies wages and authorizes the benefits.ĭebit cards take another week to issue and send, which means even the folks who applied on the first possible day won’t see their plastic lifeline until at least next week-by which point, one hopes, the shutdown could be over. It’s all part of the process, which for some reason cannot be done online and must involve fax machines or meandering, choose-your-own-adventure-style touch tone phone calls. No matter: per the EDD, they have to do it anyway. Because 95 percent of NASA employees are banned from the case during the shutdown, however, no one’s there to answer the phone. Īfter receiving her letter requesting benefits, the California Employment Development Department (EDD), which only handles these things from 8am to noon on weekdays, called the personnel office at NASA Ames. That’s because the directive alone did nothing to change the maddeningly ponderous process, which seems to vary from case to case depending on the savviness of the person on the other end of the line.įor Andes, it went something like this. “Newsom made it sound straightforward, but I applied on, and I can tell you that nothing’s changed.” “It’s a mess,” says Andes, one of about 1,200 federal workers who work at the NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View. Trying to access those benefits puts her on a Kafkaesque, bureaucratic loop. The reality has been a lot less reassuring, says Cris Andes, a 53-year-old NASA researcher and San Jose resident who’s been on call and unpaid since the shutdown began. “We’ll cover you,” he vowed in announcing the plan last week. Gavin Newsom defied the Trump administration by encouraging the thousands of government workers affected by the shutdown to apply for unemployment insurance.
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