THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, January 1, 1996 TAG: 9512300296
SECTION: BUSINESS WEEKLY PAGE: 04 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: Talk of the Town
LENGTH: Short : 48 lines
``I am frustrated with Newt and the boys.''
``I have a mortgage to pay, a car to pay.''
Sound like a frustrated federal worker? You're right.
Hanna Harris, a nurse at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Hampton, and local president of the American Federation of Government Employees, was voicing her discontent.
She's among the nearly 760,000 federal workers nationwide whose next paycheck - for Dec. 10-23 - will cover only days worked before the Dec. 16 shutdown.
While 20,000 to 26,000 federal workers in Hampton Roads, out of some 43,260 in total, were idled during the November shutdown, this time around fewer are said to be out.
That's largely because civilian employees of defense agencies are on the job thanks to Congress' defense appropriations.
Meanwhile, some civilian managers who staffed non-defense offices last week waded through volumes of work.
B.E. Voultsides is district director in Norfolk for the U.S. Department of Labor's Virginia workers' compensation district.
His 13-member staff normally receives hundreds of cases a week, cases such as the shipyard worker with the bashed fingers who wonders if workers' compensation covers the injury.
Those cases are stacking up atop the backlog left from the November shutdown. Voultsides' office is down to three people with orders to deal only with emergencies.
``I'm looking at a stack of just on one desk that is, without exaggeration, 12 to 14 inches high with papers and envelopes. That is just one of four desks we have in this shop. Anyway you look at it, the people are not getting served.''
And what about the 11 vacation days Voultsides had earmarked for holiday play with his grandson? He's working instead.
``I guess I'm going to lose the vacation days, but I don't know,'' Voultsides said. ``It's very unsettling. I have single parents who work in this office. They need their paychecks. I don't know very many people who don't live paycheck to paycheck.'' by CNB