Norton, Hastings Introduce Bill to Bring Furloughed FAA Employees Back to Work and Provide Back Pay

July 29, 2011

WASHINGTON, DC--The Office of Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) announced today that Norton, the senior national capital region member on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and on the Aviation Subcommittee, and Congressman Alcee L. Hastings (D-FL) of the Rules Committee will introduce a bill today to allow the 4,000 furloughed Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) employees, including 1,000 in the region, to return to work immediately and to receive back pay for the period they have been furloughed. Norton also will call Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood today to ask him to convene a meeting of House and Senate committee leaders to work out a short-term extension of the FAA authorization bill, or at least to get the workers back to work.

A bill introduced earlier this week by Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) also would give the FAA authority to bring the furloughed employees back to work and to provide retroactive pay until the stalemate over the FAA authorization bill is resolved. During previous government shutdowns, Congress has provided back pay to furloughed employees. "We cannot sit idly by as workers face another week without pay because House Republicans, for the first time, are insisting on a controversial rider in a short-term FAA authorization bill. With no negotiations in progress on even the two-month extension that failed in the House last Friday, Congress must act to keep FAA employees and their families from being held hostage to the political games being played by House Republicans on the FAA authorization bill." Norton said she very much regrets that the bill cannot include the workers who were pulled from the now-stalled airport construction projects because that would require the extension of expired FAA programs and authorities, which is provided for in a Norton-cosponsored bill, the Aviation Jobs and Safety Act of 2011, introduced this week to extend aviation programs through the rest of the fiscal year.

On Wednesday, Norton led a press conference with the ranking members of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and the Aviation Subcommittee in the hope that House Republicans would end their stunt, which has led not only to the furlough of FAA employees but also to the furlough of 90,000 construction workers, as well as to a delay in $6.2 billion of infrastructure upgrades and to $30 million a day in uncollected federal taxes. Since the FAA authorization bill expired in 2007, Congress had passed 20 clean short-term extensions.