Great, you got me with semantics. They are still not being “coerced” to work in the same way that a federal prisoner is coerced to work, nor a victim of sex trafficking is coerced to work. The federal employee can quit. The young girl who is forced into sex work can’t. That’s why the comparison is distasteful.
Great, again semantics. And again, you are still wrong- someone who can quit a job voluntarily is by definition unable to be working involuntarily. To compare the plight of federal workers to actual people who are coerced into involuntary servitude is distasteful.
You think you are winning with grammar, but you’re just demonstrating your tone deafness.
I’m not using “grammar”, I’m explaining that nobody is talking about slavery but you. The folks talking about the 13th Amendment are calling out a completely different phrase in it, which you’ve finally figured out. Please refer back to the post in which I am agreeing with you, fully, that involuntary servitude is more akin to prison labor, and does not apply here. I hope you understand.
It’s the constitution, it’s not a little grammar book.
Prisoners are f’d over in that amendment. That’s doesn’t mean everyone else should give up a constitutional protection.
Justice isn’t a zero sum game. Protecting some workers isn’t a bad outcome, even if you can “what about…” worse scenarios.
“Stop complaining! Other people have it worse!” is not a particularly smart take here. Luckily, it’s not you that makes the decision about whether it’s a coercive working environment. Again, the federal government will be sued and someone will decide how the constitution applies here.
I agree. I will say that quitting a job on a moments notice for people living from paycheck to paycheck (as well as not getting paid for more than a week) has serious consequences for people and we shouldn’t ignore that (even if we don’t call it slavery). I’d suspect that many people don’t feel like quitting is actual a viable option, because it’s 6 on one hand half dozen on their other…
No. This is not at all what has been said in any of the comments of this thread, this is a straw man. This is a derail.
This looks much more like a semantic debate than the one you are referencing.
People have made clear what they are not saying, that should be enough to move on unless you want to start a new thread to avoid derailing this conversation.
Random question (just curious as a non US resident so i don’t know the detail)
This pay freeze due to the shutdown: When it’s fixed eventually, do the employees recieve the pay they missed backdated, or are they literally losing paychecks for this?
Option #1 is terrible
Option #2 is catastrophic, and no sane gov employee should come into work if this is the case…
Congress passed a bill to ensure back pay to government workers affected by the shutdown, and McConnell has said Trump will sign it, but I’ll believe that when I see it.
Ack, worst option then. If it were me the last thing i’d do is believe anything from the Trump administration unless it was done and in writing, even then i’d be wary
Let’s just say that black people are not just historical victims of these sorts of things.
If we don’t push back here, and push back now, we don’t get to claim surprise when it happens again.
We’re already in a world where the rights of workers are fairly laughable. Yes, these workers now can quit. Right up until they can’t. When corporations know that legislatures and judges will back them when they get to dictate even the terms of termination…
A lot of the people backing this shutdown and the idea of forcing people back to work with no pay also have expressed or agreed with opinions that slavery (actual chattel slavery) wasn’t all that bad. Why do we want to give them a toehold? All the “it’s not that bad” dismissal of the current situation accomplishes is setting up the possibility that soon it will again become that bad.
And we all know who the winners and losers in that situation will be.
I remember GM laying off and closing up plants for several months at a time…back in the '80’s.
The employees would collect unemployment until they were called back, or they chose other work.
If they didn’t like the “uncertainty” they quit and looked for a (semi) more stable job.
But they were not given “back/late” pay.
Jobs in the private sector are much more risky, with little to no benefits…especially in the “Right to Work” states.
(that’s a term straight out of Frank Lunzt (sp) Repug’s. playbook).
Folks get the pink-slip, or fired, every hour of every day out here…in the real world.
For sometimes even dumber reasons.
With No Back Pay. .IOWs, they’re Shat out of Luck…and they get on with it.
No Front Page Headlines or TV interviews.
They just…DEAL.
It’s not “free work” and there’s no “savings”.
They’ll get back pay, plus it’s going to cost extra in overtime to play Catch Up.
Not to mention the destruction of National Parks, etc., etc.
The Rat infestations, more unsafe Foods and Drugs getting to market, the co$t will be doubled due to this fiasco.
That isn’t guaranteed. Trump hasn’t signed anything that guarantees back pay, and they’ll only get back pay when the shutdown ends… which could happen in a week, a month, or six months. For now, it’s free work and a way to demonstrate to his base that he can ‘trim the fat’ by hundreds of thousands of employees and still keep things running — and you know he couldn’t care less about the Parks.
In the past, federal employees working during a shutdown have always gotten back-pay once a shutdown ends and funds are freed up. Furloughed, freelance, and contract employees, however, are SOL.
