'That income is gone': shutdown pain lingers for unpaid contract workers

Unlike federal employees, contractors don’t expect Congress will vote to pay them back wages for work missed

Hundreds of thousands of US government contractors went back to work early this week after the end of a record 35-day government shutdown, but Tamela Worthen, who works as a security guard at the Smithsonian museum in Washington DC, wasn’t among them.

Instead, she was at home recovering from an emergency room visit on Monday after a dangerously-elevated blood pressure left her dizzy and feeling like she couldn’t breathe. Worthen has hypertension and after a month of missed paychecks, she was unable to afford her medication this month, causing the flare-up.

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from US news | The Guardian http://bit.ly/2DLdjja