I begin this piece by noting that the Bureau of the Fiscal Service has, in my humble opinion, been the best place to work in the MOV and these remarks in no way reflect on Bureau management, executives, or the broader Department of the Treasury.

This administration, however, has sent degrading messages to federal employees via official government channels and the head of the so-called department of government efficiency, Elon Musk, has referred to federal employees on his social media platform as “the parasite class.” We cannot remain silent.

Federal employees have not spent the last five years just chilling at home doing nothing, as Trump suggested with Musk by his side in the Oval Office the other day. If you’re ignorant enough to believe and agree with that, you are completely clueless and clearly do not have the slightest understanding of what you’re talking about.

Federal civil servants are working-class Americans who chose careers in public service to deliver a functioning federal government for the people of this country. In thousands of ways the U.S. federal government affects your daily life and makes possible the societal, cultural and socioeconomic interactions that make up your days. Politicians set the parameters for good and bad alike, but civil servants devote our lives to responsible stewardship of tax dollars and provision of what the people have demanded from their government.

Every one of us works harder every working day, whether from home or in an office building or elsewhere, than either Donald Trump or Elon Musk ever dreamed of working. We don’t have rich daddies who handed us down wealth they exploited from others. We don’t get taxpayer bailouts through favorable bankruptcy laws and the tax code when we fail with our inherited wealth. We can’t buy up other peoples’ hard work and ideas and slap our names on them to siphon billions from those who actually earned it, like Musk. We aren’t sitting around all day at places like Mar-a-Lago sticking highly classified documents in random restrooms and playing golf while the Heritage Foundation wrecks the entire country in our names.

We also form the backbone of the economy of the Mid-Ohio Valley. The MOV will take decades to recover, if it ever does, should the 2,000-3,000 federal workforce jobs — or even a substantial fraction of them — disappear. Yet a huge number of people in this community have vilified, demonized, degraded, antagonized, castigated, and insulted every one of us because a felon and lifelong conman who had to be bonded out on half-a-billion dollars in civil penalties for sex abuse and fraud said we’re lazy and our jobs pointless.

We in Parkersburg helped deliver over $4.5 trillion of pandemic aid to states, localities, and tribes across this country during a global pandemic, even as we had to dramatically shift the way we worked and lived. We helped process over 1.3 billion on-time payments worth over $5.7 trillion in 2023 alone for things like Social Security benefits, Veterans benefits, tax refunds and so much more. We help manage government securities and bonds upon which global markets are driven and almost all of the federal government’s shared services (travel, HR, procurement, fiscal accounting and IT security) every day.

We also live here. We buy and rent homes, pay property taxes, create demand for businesses, spend on the cultural arts like the Parkersburg Art Center and Actor’s Guild, pay city user fees, pay into police, fire and sanitation in multiple municipalities, frequent parks and pools, and give back through efforts like the Combined Federal Campaign (look it up).

But so many of you would prefer cultish loyalty to a man who doesn’t know or care about you and never will over your neighbors and community members because somehow, in ways you never can really describe, you’re “winning.” I guess the totally avoidable suffering of others who work our tails off and try to live life with the same expectations of comfort and peace and security you have is “winning.” At least we know where we stand.

Eric Engle is chief steward of National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) Chapter 190.