Back Pay Is On the Way
- By Kellie Lunney; October 24, 2013
The government shutdown is over and payroll is back up and running. By the end of this week, most of the federal workforce will have received retroactive pay for the 16-day shutdown.
In fact, thousands of federal employees already have received back pay to make whole the partial paycheck they got during the shutdown, which lasted from Oct. 1 through Oct. 16. The Interior Business Center, run by the Interior Department, handles payroll for 42 government agencies and 240,000 federal employees. IBC deposited back pay on Tuesday to employees directly affected by the shutdown — a week before their regularly scheduled paycheck on Oct. 29, according to a Federal Times report. Perhaps this makes up for IBC’s data entry error last month that delayed the paychecks of 40,000 employees. IBC is the payroll provider for agencies including Interior, NASA and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Shutdown-affected federal employees with a different government payroll processor should receive their back pay in their next paycheck, which for many is Oct. 25.
The National Treasury Employees Union, which represents employees at the Customs and Border Protection agency and the Internal Revenue Service, praised those two agencies for expediting retroactive pay for workers. IRS employees will see their four days of missed pay in their next paycheck, which will arrive as early as Thursday. CBP employees will receive back pay for Oct. 1 to Oct. 5 as soon as Oct. 24. Their next regular paycheck will post to their bank accounts on Oct. 28.
“Getting both excepted and furloughed employees paid in a timely manner was a primary goal for NTEU,” said Colleen Kelley, the union’s president, in a statement.
For more information on how the shutdown affected pay and benefits, including leave accrual, read this guidance from the Office of Personnel Management.
American Federation of Government Employees Local 704 