Anxiety intensifies for Utah’s furloughed federal workers in week 4 of shutdown

The entrance sign to Zion National Park just outside of Sprindale, Utah. (Photo by SageElyse/Getty Images)

Instead of getting paid as they normally would on Friday, many of Utah’s federal employees were figuring out how to stretch their budgets for as long as it takes Congress to reopen the government. 

“The anxiety is starting to really rise in a lot of people,” said Robert Lawrence, president of the union representing Ogden’s IRS employees. “They’re starting to wonder, you know, how they’re going to pay their bills, how they’re going to pay their mortgage.” 

Lawrence said many of his colleagues did not get a full paycheck earlier this month and some have applied for unemployment, but those benefits probably won’t meet their needs. The IRS employs about 6,500 people in Ogden, Lawrence estimated, and the majority are furloughed because of the shutdown — unable to work or get paid. 

The possibility of layoffs has exacerbated their stress. Roughly 100 were among thousands of U.S. government workers across the country who received notices earlier this month saying they’d be laid off, Lawrence said. A judge temporarily blocked the terminations, which were set to happen in December. 

Lawrence said the shutdown is holding up the agency’s work ahead of the coming tax season, all while it’s still trying to recover from a slowdown caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“What makes it so frustrating is that, you know, we have nothing to do with what’s going on in D.C. We have a job to do. We do that job. We do it proudly, and we expect to get paid for it,” Lawrence said. “I’m not siding with either side. Change has to come from both sides.”

Some of the agency’s employees in Ogden are longtime staffers who moved up the ranks, but the majority are getting paid somewhere near $15 per hour, said Lawrence, president of the National Treasury Employees’ Union chapter 67. 

“You can’t support a family on that,” Lawrence said. “So to miss a paycheck is potentially devastating.”

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Rangers at Zion National Park are also feeling the pressure of another week without pay, according to the Zion Forever Project, a nonprofit supporting the park and its workers. 

“On a typical day, you would see rangers kind of everywhere, and that’s not the case anymore,” said Tiffany Stouffer, the organization’s development director. “Very few of them are working, and even less of those who are working are working with pay.”

The organization launched a push Friday to raise more money for a fund helping to cover counseling and mental health support for the park’s employees and its own staff. Stouffer said many park rangers fear that they’ll be called back to work when the government reopens, only to be laid off a short time later. 

“These are career professionals with sometimes multiple degrees, or lifetimes of knowledge and experience,” she said. 

At the nonprofit Switchpoint, which operates a food pantry in St. George, spokesperson Zachary Almaguer said four federal employees — two working for public lands agencies — have gotten in touch about food assistance, expressing concern about making ends meet. 

Stouffer fought tears as she thought about Zion employees in similar situations. 

Said Stouffer: “They’re Utahns, they’re part of the fabric of our communities, and they’re suffering.”

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