{"id":20047,"date":"2025-10-25T08:38:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-25T08:38:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/20047\/"},"modified":"2025-10-25T08:38:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-25T08:38:07","slug":"federal-workers-at-mco-miss-first-full-paycheck-of-shutdown-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/20047\/","title":{"rendered":"Federal workers at MCO miss first full paycheck of shutdown"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>ORLANDO, Fla. \u2014\u00a0Imagine this: It&#8217;s payday, you get your paystub after working 40 hours each week and the total is $0.<\/p>\n<p>That is the reality for TSA employees and air traffic controllers as the <a href=\"https:\/\/baynews9.com\/fl\/orlando\/politics\/2025\/10\/24\/government-shutdown-day-24-jeffries-bipartisan-negotiation.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">government shutdown<\/a> creeps toward historic territory.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>What You Need To Know<\/p>\n<p>At the Orlando International Airport, you might not immediately notice there was a shutdown based on TSA lines or flight times, but that could change next week<br \/>\n<br \/>Friday was payday for TSA employees, but they did not receive any money due to the shutdown<br \/>\n<br \/>Many TSA employees live an hour or more from the airport and many have spouses that also work at TSA, leaving families stressed<br \/>\n<br \/>Without money for gas to get to work or pay for child care while on the job, workers will need to make tough decisions<\/p>\n<p>At the Orlando International Airport, you might not immediately notice there was a shutdown based on TSA lines or flight times.<\/p>\n<p>But Friday was not a normal day at the airport. You could see TSA workers leaving after their shift carrying boxes of diapers and bags of canned goods from the donation drive to take home to support their families.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The stress and the emotion have been building for the last 24 days.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt is just hard. It is hard to explain to my 6-year-old why we can\u2019t go to fall festivals, why we have to save money to pay mortgage because mortgage does not take IOU\u2019s,\u201d said Oksana Kelly, the women\u2019s coordinator at the AFGE Local 556.<\/p>\n<p>Kelly and her husband both work at TSA, which means neither of them are getting paid to support their two kids. \u201cIt is stressful for us, stressful for our bank accounts, and at this point, it is going to turn to zero very soon,\u201d Kelly said.<\/p>\n<p>As their bank accounts dissolve, so does their hope for a resolution. \u201cIt seems like we are some pawns in these games and they (are) just over there coming and going, voting on the same bill 12 times. It is like beating a dead horse at this point,\u201d Kelly said.<\/p>\n<p>There is frustration from federal workers across the airport.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt is so unfortunate that we are where we are and there has just been no movement,\u201d said Dan McCabe, the NATCA Southern Regional vice president.<\/p>\n<p>McCabe is from the National Air Traffic Controllers Association. He said his team is working on solutions to help with mortgages and car payments and making sure employees know there are services available for mental health.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFinancial stress is some of the worse stress that any person can ever deal with,\u201d McCabe said.<\/p>\n<p>So far, MCO has not had major disruptions due to the shutdown from the tower to TSA lines. \u201cPeople show up, but I am expecting that there is going to be a lot less people coming in, as people are going to be running out of money for child care, somebody have to stay home with those kids and if I have nowhere to leave my kids, how am I going to come to work?\u201d Kelly said.<\/p>\n<p>Those types of conversations are happening in households of federal workers this week as they try to figure out what to do next. In Orlando, many TSA employees live an hour or more from work, so paying to get to get there is a real challenge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ORLANDO, Fla. \u2014\u00a0Imagine this: It&#8217;s payday, you get your paystub after working 40 hours each week and the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19561,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[3140,274,28,115,1335,139,141,140,99,9429,135,278,835],"class_list":{"0":"post-20047","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-orlando","8":"tag-app-local-state-politics","9":"tag-app-top-stories","10":"tag-florida","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-orange-county","13":"tag-orlando","14":"tag-orlando-headlines","15":"tag-orlando-news","16":"tag-politics","17":"tag-sarah-winkelmann","18":"tag-tampa","19":"tag-top-stories","20":"tag-vod"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20047","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20047"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20047\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}