Can you, or anybody else, explain this to me. This doesn't seem very Constitutional that you can forced to work without pay. Seems like we abolished something like a while back.
edit:
a better explanation:
Some agencies, and thus the employees working in them, are “exempt” from a shutdown because they do not get their funding through the congressional appropriations process. The largest of these is the U.S. Postal Service, which operates on income from postage and the items it sells. Other agencies, or parts of them, also have funding not subject to annual appropriations – for example, through fees they charge for their services, or from trust funds or multi-year budgets. Employees whose salaries are funded in that way would continue working, and getting paid, as normal.
For employees whose salaries are paid from appropriations, there is another distinction: “excepted” vs. “non-excepted” (not “essential” vs. “non-essential,” which are the more commonly used, but not official, terms).
Excepted employees are those whose jobs involve the safety of human life, the protection of property, or certain other types of work designated by their agencies as necessary to continue. These are not necessarily the same as “emergency” employees who are expected to continue coming to work when agencies close for other reasons, such as for severe weather.
Excepted employees are to continue reporting for work as normal during a shutdown, though for the meantime they would not be paid for that time. Because agencies are required to pay for services performed, those employees are guaranteed to be paid after Congress passes – and the president signs – a new appropriation or continuing resolution. Exactly when they would be paid would depend on the timing of the new spending authority and the payroll cycle the agency uses.
When a shutdown starts, employees who are neither “exempt” nor “excepted” are put on unpaid furlough. They are to perform what guidance calls “minimal activities as necessary to execute an orderly suspension of agency operations related to non-excepted activities.” That typically is to last about a half-day on their first scheduled workday after a shutdown begins. They then are to leave the workplace and they are not to work while on furlough, even on a volunteer basis.
