What Is It With The "Back Pay" Nonsense?

A couple of days ago, per Axios:

Furloughed federal workers aren't guaranteed compensation for their forced time off during the government shutdown, according to a draft White House memo described to Axios by three sources.

If you've never been caught in a layoff at, say, a private sector factory, you might be under the impression that laid-off employees normally get "back pay" when they get the call to come back to work.

They don't.

They can file for unemployment benefits, which kick in after one week of being without work (at least in Missouri, and at least as of the mid-1990s, the last place and time I had occasion to know).

They can go look for another job instead of waiting around.

But whether they're off for a week or a month, they don't get paid for the "forced time off" when they return.

Or, rather, not in any private sector situation I've ever seen. I guess there could be outliers.

When I built boats for a living, the factory cut a shift and I got laid off. I filed for unemployment benefits, and immediately started looking for another job. IIRC, I collected one check before I got hired elsewhere, and when the boat factory called to let me know things were back on again, I told them to find someone else.

When I worked at a union food factory, there was a short (one week) partial layoff, and as a very junior employee, I got sent home. Since I knew it would only be one week, I knew there would be no unemployment checks; since it was a good job, I waited it out instead of filing applications at McDonald's, etc.

In neither case did the company say "here's your pay for the time you weren't working for us," and why would they do that?

Federal employees, of course, consider themselves Very Special and Important, such that if they're "furloughed" for a week or a month or a year, they should get paid for that time off after they start working again.

They shouldn't.

I haven't closely read the details of the law in question, and it will be up to the courts to sort out whether "back pay" for time off is a fixed obligation or just something Congress can do, but just as a general principle, if you're not working and you're not using your fringe benefits (vacation and sick leave), it's silly to expect to get paid.

It's also silly to expect your job to continue to exist at all just because you consider yourself Very Special and Important. If Trump wants to, and legally can, fire a bunch of federal employees during the shutdown and never call them back, I'm all for that.