Government shutdown leaves workers reeling: "We seem to be pawns"

All the while, claims for unemployment benefits were piling up; the District of Columbia said it had received about 900 claims connected to the shutdown, and the state of Maryland counted 637 at midweek. More than 350 federal workers in Colorado had filed unemployment claims.

Daniel A. Sobien, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Tampa, Fla., who has been furloughed and is living on savings, said that federal workers are “tired of being political pawns.”

“I realize that unfair things happen to people all the time,” he said, “but it really is unfair that because of politics, government employees have to shoulder the burden.”