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On February 14, 2026, roughly 47,000 to 50,000 Transportation Security Administration agents reported to work at America’s airports knowing their next paycheck wouldn’t arrive. The Department of Homeland Security had entered a funding lapse—when Congress can’t agree on a budget and the government runs out of money to pay workers—and these workers faced a choice that would be illegal in almost any other context: continue working without pay, or walk out and risk permanent termination from federal employment.
The answer to whether TSA agents can be fired for walking out is straightforward and severe: Yes. And the consequences extend far beyond losing a job.
Many of these employees are still recovering financially from the 43-day shutdown that ended three months earlier in November 2025.
Federal Employees Cannot Strike
If multiple TSA officers coordinated to collectively refuse unpaid work—whether through explicit communication or merely through mutual understanding—they could be found to have participated in a strike. The law is absolute.
The 1981 Air Traffic Controllers Strike
The warning that every federal employee remembers happened in 1981. Reagan declared the strike illegal and gave the controllers 48 hours to return to work. When the vast majority didn’t—only about 1,300 returned—Reagan fired 11,345 air traffic controllers on August 5, 1981, and issued a lifetime ban on their federal employment.
The government managed the operational fallout through supervisors, non-striking controllers, and military personnel. Former PATCO members and their families experienced financial ruin, broken marriages, and in some cases, suicide.
That precedent has held for more than 40 years. Federal employees don’t strike today, even when facing conditions that would trigger immediate action in the private sector.
Limited Protections Through Appeals
Federal employees can appeal to the Merit Systems Protection Board, which acts like a court for federal employees. However, these procedures provide limited protection against termination for strike participation because the underlying law is so clear. Once an agency proves that an employee participated in a strike—meaning an intentional, concerted refusal to perform work—the board has repeatedly held that firing them is legally allowed.
An employee charged with strike participation can argue they were fired because of their race, religion, or other protected status, that the agency punished them for reporting wrongdoing, or that they weren’t given fair procedures before being fired. If successful on these defenses, the termination can be reversed even if strike participation is proven. But these are narrow exceptions that require proving something beyond the strike itself.
What Unions Can Do
The union representing TSA officers is the American Federation of Government Employees, specifically AFGE Local 1127. A federal judge blocked the administration from eliminating collective bargaining rights for TSA officers, finding that the action “plainly” violated a prior court order.
AFGE’s power to protect those who refuse unpaid work is constrained. Unlike private-sector unions that can legally authorize and support strikes, AFGE cannot tell its TSA members to strike during a shutdown. The statute explicitly makes it illegal not only to participate in a strike, but also to be a member of an organization that asserts federal employees have a right to strike.
Federal employee unions advocate for legislative changes to prevent unpaid work requirements, provide legal representation to members disciplined for refusing work, and file lawsuits challenging agency actions. But they cannot openly encourage members to strike, and they have been unsuccessful in obtaining meaningful changes to the fundamental prohibition.
The Thirteenth Amendment Question
Some legal scholars have raised a question that remains largely untested in courts. The Constitution bans forced labor. But federal employees must work without pay and can’t strike. Does this violate that rule?
The argument runs like this: Federal employees are not merely required to work without pay during shutdowns—they are simultaneously prohibited from striking, the primary mechanism through which people can collectively withdraw their labor to demand fair treatment. They face criminal prosecution if they refuse to work. They face termination and lifetime bans. In this constrained situation, federal employees cannot realistically refuse unpaid work.
Some legal analysts have noted that if any federal employee who declines to work without pay during a shutdown could be prosecuted as a striker, the Thirteenth Amendment argument would be substantial.
Courts have been reluctant to intervene. The federal judiciary traditionally defers to the executive branch on matters of national security and government operations. This constitutional argument is new and hasn’t been fully tested.
The Financial Trap
Federal employees face genuine financial consequences both for continuing unpaid work and for refusing it. Research from the 2018-2019 shutdown documented people sleeping in their cars to save on gas, selling blood and plasma to pay bills, and taking on second jobs while still required to report to their regular federal positions. More than 95 percent of TSA officers are classified as “essential workers” who must keep working during shutdowns—they simply stop receiving paychecks while continuing their regular duties.
The financial impact of the previous 43-day shutdown lingers. People reported late fees from missed bill payments, eviction notices, loss of child care, and inability to cover basic living expenses.
Those who refuse to work and are terminated face their own financial catastrophe. If fired, they lose not their paycheck but also health insurance and retirement benefits. A federal employee fired for breaking rules must fight it in court for months or years with no income and no federal health coverage during the appeal period. If the appeal is unsuccessful—and given the clear statutory prohibition on strikes, success is unlikely—the termination is permanent and the employee becomes permanently unsuitable for federal positions.
Federal employees who are terminated may not qualify for unemployment benefits. Most states won’t give unemployment benefits to people fired for breaking rules, and striking has always been treated as breaking the rules, even though federal employees never had the right to strike in the first place.
A 2019 law guarantees that federal employees working or furloughed during a shutdown will receive backpay once it ends. But the back pay doesn’t arrive immediately. The 2018-2019 shutdown ended in January 2019, but some people didn’t receive full compensation for many months thereafter. For those living paycheck-to-paycheck, the promise of eventual back pay provides no relief when rent is due, a child needs medical care, or a car needs repair.
The Trump administration has disputed whether the 2019 law guarantees automatic back pay, with the Trump administration’s budget director arguing that Congress must separately authorize back pay for each shutdown. Congress confirmed in budget bills that employees automatically get paid back, but this disagreement shows that employees can’t count on getting paid.
Different Agencies, Different Vulnerabilities
While the strike prohibition applies uniformly to all federal employees, refusing to work without pay has different consequences depending on the agency and the person’s position.
The Transportation Security Administration presents perhaps the starkest scenario. About 47,000 to 50,000 TSA officers work at airports across the country. About 95 percent are classified as necessary and must continue working during shutdowns. The operational disruption would be severe, particularly as the spring break travel season approaches and the 2026 FIFA World Cup approaches in June, which will bring millions of international visitors to U.S. cities.
The Coast Guard presents a more complex situation. The Coast Guard is the only military branch under the Department of Homeland Security, and its workers are military members, not regular government employees. This means Coast Guard members face military law enforcement and military justice system consequences that differ from civil service discipline procedures.
While most of DHS faces a budget standoff, ICE and Customs and Border Protection received $140 billion in a separate budget bill passed in 2025, with $75 billion allocated specifically to ICE. This means ICE officers will likely continue receiving paychecks during the DHS shutdown, so they’ll keep getting paychecks while TSA and Coast Guard employees won’t.
Current Status and Outlook
As of mid-February 2026, federal employees have no legal way to refuse unpaid work. The law bans strikes. The appeals board has sided with the government when firing strikers. Courts have refused to get involved in disputes between employees and the government during shutdowns. The argument that this violates the ban on forced labor hasn’t been fully tested and judges are skeptical of this argument.
Federal employees have some limited protections: the promise of eventual back pay from the 2019 law, the right to union representation in disciplinary proceedings, the possibility of winning if they can prove discrimination or retaliation, and union contracts that might protect them. These protections help, but they don’t give employees real power to demand fair treatment during a shutdown.
As shutdowns happen more often and last longer, employees keep facing financial disasters. The 2019 shutdown lasted 35 days. The 2025 shutdown lasted 43 days—the longest in American history. A multi-week shutdown every few years, combined with laws banning strikes and limiting what unions can do, puts all the burden on federal employees to solve Congress’s budget fights, with no legal way to protect themselves.
Some proposals include automatic temporary budgets during disputes so there would be no more shutdowns; federal employees get paid within days of a shutdown instead of waiting weeks for back pay; and letting unions negotiate special protections for employees during shutdowns.
Congress won’t pass laws to prevent shutdowns even though shutdowns cost billions and hurt employees. Each shutdown leads to calls for change, but Congress keeps having budget fights.
Federal employees—most of whom aren’t involved in the political fights and who knew federal jobs paid less than private jobs—pay the price for Congress’s failures. They remain prohibited from the mechanisms available to people elsewhere, must choose between going broke or working without pay and risking being fired forever. The law is clear about what they risk. It’s unclear how much longer employees will accept this situation.
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