At 9:35 am on Wednesday, the first morning of the US government shutdown, employees at the Small Business Administration (SBA) received a template from human resources for their suggested “out-of-office” email. They were advised to blame the Democrats.
“I am out of office for the foreseeable future because Senate Democrats voted to block a clean federal spending bill (HR 5371), leading to a government shutdown that is preventing the US Small Business Administration from serving America’s 36 million small businesses. Every day that Senate Democrats continue [to] oppose a clean funding bill, they are stopping an estimated 320 small businesses from accessing $170 million in SBA-guaranteed funding.”
The email goes on to say that once the shutdown is over, “we are prepared to immediately return to the record-breaking services we are providing under the leadership of the Trump Administration.”
“My jaw dropped when I read it,” says an SBA employee who asked to remain anonymous because they are not authorized to speak to the press. The employee says they worried that if someone actually used the email template, it “would be a blatant violation of the Hatch Act.”
The Hatch Act is a law that sets limits on the kinds of political activities government employees can engage in and protects “federal employees from political coercion in the workplace.” Violating the Hatch Act could result in a government worker losing their job.
“It feels like coerced speech where the government is forcing employees to spread its propaganda in communicating with the public,” says Don Moynihan, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan.
SBA did not respond to a request for comment (and none of its press team members appear to have used the suggested out-of-office reply template).
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Employees at other government agencies received more standard out-of-office directives. At the US Department of Agriculture, the out-of-office template states that employees are “on furlough without access to email, due to the lapse in federal government funding” and refers readers to USA.gov for further information.