Here & Now

Wisconsin Federal Prison Guards Await Pay Due to Shutdown

Frederica Freyberg:
The U.S. government has been on a partial shutdown for coming up on a month. The longest in history. Some workers have been pulled off unpaid furlough and returned to jobs, still up paid. Some 3,000 workers in Wisconsin are affected, including federal correctional officers who have been on the job and unpaid since the start of the shutdown. One of them is Tim Viegut. He’s union president at the Oxford Federal Correctional Institution. He joins us now from Baraboo, and thanks very much for doing so.

Tim Viegut:
Thanks for having me. Great to be here.

Frederica Freyberg:
So what is the lay of the land at Oxford prison? How many officers and others are affected by the shut down and $0 paychecks?

Tim Viegut:
We have about 235 staff working at Oxford that are going without a paycheck right now.

Frederica Freyberg:
And so what’s morale like?

Tim Viegut:
You know, it’s rough. We’ve been dealing with other issues: understaffing, lot of mandatory overtime, augmentation. And now to ask people to keep coming in to work in this kind of job and not getting paid, the morale — it’s hard to stay positive sometimes.

Frederica Freyberg:
Is the prison experiencing people not showing for work as we’ve seen with TSA agents?

Tim Viegut:
No, we’re not having that issue. We are told to come to work. We have a lot of very good, dedicated staff that work at Oxford, and they are all showing up. We’re not having that issue. It’s just the added stress of going home at night wondering how we’re going to pay bills.

Frederica Freyberg:
You will get paid eventually. Does that soften the blow?

Tim Viegut:
To those that can get by missing a check or two or even more, yeah, it does, but a lot of people just like in the — anywhere in this country, a lot of people live paycheck to paycheck. A lot of people can’t go a month or two without having a check.

Frederica Freyberg:
So what are you hearing specifically from officers in terms of how badly this affects them in that way, missing checks?

Tim Viegut:
You know, we missed a check a few days ago, and you know, there’s been people that stopped by and talked to me, wondering what they can do. Just little things that people don’t think about like medications for their family, for their children, daycare, things like that. There are some that are being hit very hard right now.

Frederica Freyberg:
And so anything being done about that in the community or on the part of the, you know, prison management or anything like that?

Tim Viegut:
We’re all trying to take care of each other, but there are some people that are talking to their creditors. Some understand and some are willing to wait for their payments until we get paid. Others are not. So there’s a lot of staff that work there that don’t have family in the area, don’t have help. There’s a few couples that both people work at the prison, and without income coming in, now they don’t have daycare. So we’re trying to help each other as much as with can but the real thing people need is that paycheck. And a lot of times, that’s hard to help with.

Frederica Freyberg:
Exactly. What’s your reaction to some who believe that it’s good to reduce the size of the federal government or continue this shutdown?

Tim Viegut:
Me personally, the reason this shutdown is going on, I don’t care one way or the other. I just want the people that go to work every day to be able to get what they deserve and that’s their paycheck.

Frederica Freyberg:
When would the shutdown have to end to not miss another paycheck?

Tim Viegut:
Id say probably in the next couple days. And today being Friday, it would have to be over Monday or Tuesday because of the holiday or I think we’re going to miss another check.

Frederica Freyberg:
So what are your union members telling you? Are people getting — you know, really very almost panicked at this point?

Tim Viegut:
There are some and I think the longer this shutdown goes, the more there will be. It’s going to become a point where people are going to wonder how they’re going to pay for gas, you know, in their car to get to work. And like I said before, we don’t have the option of not coming to work. So it’s just a little thing of how we get to work, gas, that’s going to become an issue.

Frederica Freyberg:
All right. Well, we need to leave it there, Tim Viegut, from the Oxford Federal Correctional Institution. Thanks very much for joining us, and good luck.

Tim Viegut:
Thank you for having me.