Federal judge: Government employees can't refuse to work unpaid during partial shutdown

[Igel]

11. No, it's not slavery.

The workers are within their rights to refuse to work.

What they can't do is refuse to work and have any expectation of keeping their job. It's like any other job. Take mine, for instance. I refuse to go to work for a week and I'm very likely not going to be going to that job again the following week.

Slaves didn't have that option. Those in any kind of servitude couldn't just walk away, with the punishment being that they wouldn't be allowed to just return and resume their duties. Hyperbole may be a Trumpian rhetorical ploy, but he doesn't have a monopoly on it.

The law apparently is old, from just post-WWII, and is there to prevent striking. There were lots of strikes just after the war. If they don't to go work to protest not getting paid, that's not going to work in protest of a grievance. What's a strike? Not going to work in protest of a grievance.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/01/shutdown-federal-workers-cant-strike/579793/ seems not unreasonable.

It could be worse. When the steel mill my parents worked for had forced shutdowns--often for lack of orders, and for anywhere from 1 to 2 weeks at a time, they'd take advantage of the time to do required yearly preventive maintenance. The union was getting close to being on the ropes. The "deal" that was "negotiated" for these shutdowns was straightforward. When the mill shut down for however long it was shut down, whatever time of year it shut down, that constituted part of the employees' annual vacation. You get 4 weeks' vacation and the mill's shut down for two weeks in February, you have 2 weeks left. If you took all 4 early in the year and the mill shut down in November for two weeks, you get 2 weeks' vacation the following year.