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Washington, D.C.—Pending congressional approval of the Senate leadership’s agreement ending the government shutdown, federal employees are eager to get back to performing the important work of the public, the leader of the nation’s largest independent union of federal employees said today.

“For 16 days, while federal workers were furloughed, Americans were denied access to so many vital federal services. Hundreds of thousands of federal employees suffered doubly, both from a loss of pay and from being kept from doing their jobs,” said President Colleen M. Kelley of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU).

She added: “With the looming end of the shutdown, federal workers face an enormous task to get their agencies up and running at full steam and to dig into the backlog of accumulated work. But I know they will approach that task with the same dedication and professionalism they bring to their day-to-day work.”

Among the work that the shutdown has put at risk is ongoing scientific research, the safety of our food and drugs, the operation of the National Parks system, efforts to ensure clean air and water, collection of taxes owed, oversight of nuclear reactors and radioactive materials, provision of grant money for school lunch programs and assistance for low-income mothers.

The agreement reached by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) provides for retroactive pay for furloughed employees. Other employees, designated as ‘excepted’ from furlough under Office of Personnel Management guidelines, continued to work during the shutdown, but did so without being paid. “Our nation owes a debt of gratitude to the thousands of employees who worked every day without any idea of when they would be paid,” Kelley said.

“NTEU will work with federal agencies and the administration to ensure that all federal employees are paid as soon as possible. Partial paychecks and the uncertainty of when they will be paid have caused a great deal of financial strain for workers, and that needs to end,” President Kelley said.

“I believe this shutdown could have been avoided and will cause long-term damage to federal agencies, federal employees and the government’s ability to attract and keep talented dedicated employees,” she added. An NTEU survey of its members found that 67 percent of workers said they would not recommend federal service as a career.

As a result, President Kelley emphasized, it is well past time for the nation to move beyond crisis budgeting. “The appropriations process needs to work as designed; we need to end the draconian cuts demanded by sequestration over the next nine years; and, we need to fund agencies at levels that match the needs of the public,” the NTEU leader said.

She added: “These constant budget battles must end for the economic well-being of our nation.”

As the nation’s largest independent federal union, NTEU represents 150,000 employees in 31 agencies and departments.