While i don't envy their position - i think describing it as working without pay as a little disingenuous - while they have yet to be paid for the work they are performing, does anyone really believe that they are not going to be paid for their work down the road?
Congress already signed off on giving everyone back pay and I've read that they will be giving out a 1 day's pay and a $500 bonus to all TSA officers. It helps cushion the blow of having a $0.00 paycheck but it doesn't fix the situation. You have people not being able to pay rent and mortgages. The bank will be fine but a landlord might not be so fine, they will have to dig into savings to make mortgage payments. Tha…
Of course, in the Soviet Union, you didn't have rent and mortgage payments to make, bread and vodka was provided through rations, and during the collapse, nobody cared too much if you looted your workplace of anything that wasn't nailed down, or couldn't be pried off, so society kind of stumbled along, despite the lack of wages.
What I really don't understand is why this isn't being treated like the recurring, front-page, every-headline, national emergency that this is.
For bonus points: These employees are forbidden, by law, to do a strike, or perform a work stoppage, or a work slowdown. If CBP actually carried one out, though, this 'crisis' would be resolved in under 24 hours, as every single company in the United States that had an international supply chain would be screaming at the White House to get this problem fixed.