Closed Wage: Even with an agreement to reopen the government, federal employees will likely not be paid until next week

While Congress and President Trump agreed Friday to reopen dozens of federal government agencies closed for 35 days, the 800,000 employees who have not been paid for more than a month

Although employees are about to return to work when Trump signs legislation that will revive the government for the next three weeks, its huge point sheet and payroll processing systems take several days to come back to life. Employees will need to file time cards, agencies will have to approve them, and the Treasury Department will have to spend billions of dollars on "off-cycle" payroll.

It will probably be Thursday, Friday or Friday. even Saturday, before the employees are paid, according to former federal officials, pay agents and senior officials of the agency. This delay could cause ongoing financial hardship to thousands of employees struggling with zero cash flow during the partial closure of the government.

The fact that the agreement was signed on a Friday makes payments to employees more complex, as human resources offices are generally not staffed. and employees returning to work on Monday will probably face a huge amount of late work.

[Senate approves bill to reopen the government, the first step to ending the nation’s longest shutdown]

The law that the president signed on January 16 to pay for laid-off employees and those who worked without pay during the closure requires that they be compensated "as soon as possible" after the reopening of the agencies, regardless of the time where they would normally be paid.

A senior administration official who communicated under the guise of anonymity said in an email late Friday that "recognizing the urgency of getting federal employees paid quickly, the l & # 39; The administration takes steps to ensure that they receive their salary as quickly as possible. "

But the official gave no details about the logistics of payments, nor an estimate of the when the money would be deposited electronically into bank accounts. The grievor stated that the pay schedule would likely vary from agency to agency.

Margaret Weichert, Deputy Director of Management at the White House, asked agency leaders in a memo on Friday to "prepare for an orderly reopening" of the closed offices. "As agencies identify these steps, they need to be ready to prioritize the restoration of employee compensation and benefits."

The government's payroll process is similar to that of the government. a large company: Employees submit work hours, sick days and overtime to an attendance management system. a supervisor approves it and forwards it to the agency's human resources department, which downloads it to one of the government's four payroll providers. Paychecks usually arrive at employee bank accounts approximately one week after the end of the pay cycle.

In this case, the payroll service providers might need one or two more cycles to account for the complexity, for example when an employee is on sick leave or on a leave of absence. ;disability. Cyrus Lohfink, retired director of the National Finance Center based in the Department of Agriculture, which treats the payroll of 800,000 employees in 130 agencies, said Cyrus Lohfink.

"A lot of things have to happen behind the scenes," Lohfink said. "What you do not want to do is create a situation in which employees get upset because they are not paid properly."

He stated that it could take several weeks "until everyone is caught up."

About 1% of federal workers still receive paper copies of their checks by mail or have them electronically deposited in small credit unions. Lohfink could take a day or two more to receive their payment, said Lohfink.

Vincent Castellano, National Vice-President of the American Federation of Government Employees, representing transport safety officers, believes that they will not see their wages for at least a week.

Angela Fritz, Danielle Paquette and Dan Lamothe contributed to the writing of this report.