Government Shutdown Shutters Madison’s Federal Wood Lab

For over a century, the federal government has headquartered its research into wood at an outlet of the Forest Service, part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, in a hulking stone building on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus.

The Forest Products Laboratory has even expanded in recent years to more modern facilities where researchers study things you may have never considered — like how to slow the spread of mold on military munitions crates. How to recycle a postage stamp. How to construct ever-taller buildings from timber.

“Even though wood has been used for thousands of years, there’s still a fair amount that is not known about it from a mechanical perspective,” said Nathan Bechle, a materials research engineer who says he’s worked on safety improvements for everything from baseball bats to lumber.

Today the lab buildings are closed, and Bechle and most of his colleagues are furloughed, part of the ongoing government shutdown that began on Oct. 1. In that time, the Trump administration has tried to lay off some workers and threatened not to release back pay.

It’s unknown how many of Wisconsin’s 18,000 civilian federal workers are furloughed and how many have been deemed exempted, meaning they must show up to work without pay.

But as the shutdown stretches on with no end in sight, these lab buildings and the hundreds of Forest Service and U.S. Geological Survey employees inside are an example of the often-hidden impact of federal jobs, at a time that federal workers face unprecedented instability and uncertainty.

“This looks like it’s going to be a long shutdown,” Bechle said. “No one has any idea. And I mean, leading into it, we already felt like we were very much not being supported or acknowledged in the work we were doing.”

Lab worker, fire scientist say shutdown will cause setbacks

Bechle and many other lab workers are represented by the National Federation of Federal Employees Local 276. They spoke with WPR in their capacity with the union, not on behalf of their agency.

Carl Houtman is president of that union. He said the labs generate datasets behind national building codes and safety standards used by manufacturers and private industry.

“The Forest Products Lab has always been kind of considered the kind of neutral arbiter, because you often end up in situations where, if it was a company or a university (doing the research), then you would have to ask the question, ‘OK, so who funded this research?’” Houtman said.

Some scientists housed here and employed through an interstate federal partnership oversee and study prescribed burns. Those are purposeful fires, set to manage wildfire risk, regenerate soil, mitigate pest populations and protect ecosystems. In Wisconsin, for example, fire can reduce tick populations.

There’s a relatively small seasonal window for prescribed burns, one fire scientist told WPR. She spoke on condition of anonymity, because she said the current climate against federal workers has made her fear for herself and her family.

Her time away from work has been taken up, in part, with spinning out scenarios: Which of her projects can be rebuilt after time away? Which are “permanently ruined”?

She worries a prescribed burn project in a national forest in Georgia that had been planned for years and was due to take place this winter may fall into the latter category.

“If the (shutdown) continues, I don’t think we’ll get those burns pulled off,” she said. “There’s some amount of pause that’s to be expected when you just don’t get the right weather situations. But if we’re also adding in a furlough on top of it, that completely pauses you through the full (prescribed burn) season.”

Uncertainty around pay, job status has workers rattled

Federal workers have been subject to criticism and suspicion from the beginning of Trump’s second term. Some Republicans argue the federal workforce is bloated and workers are employed on unimportant or wasteful projects.

U.S. Rep. Glenn Grothman, R-Glenbeulah, this month told WPR’s “Wisconsin Today” he’d like to see up to 200,000 federal workers laid off, saying it would reduce government spending levels and arguing that many employees “aren’t working that hard.”

Nayomi Plaza, a material scientist, disputes that characterization. She said she pursued this career path because she wanted to have an “impact.”

“I really wanted to be able to work on things that would help tomorrow,” she said. “For a lot of us, it’s not just a job; it’s a career.”

But she said she worries the current climate will discourage younger scientists from pursuing government research.

“If this is what you keep getting back, you’re probably going to call it quits at some point,” Plaza said.

The financial stress and uncertainty has also taken a toll, said Bechle, the materials engineer. He said his family has had some tough conversations.

“My oldest son just had a birthday, and we certainly throttled how much we spent and the things that we were willing to do, because we don’t know what the current financial situation is,” he said. “Depending on how long this goes, this might be a very different Christmas than we’re used to having.”

There’s a difference, too, these workers say, between planning for a few weeks of stretching out a paycheck with the promise of backpay on the other side, and trying to plan for the possibility of a layoff.

These days, a sign is taped to the front doors of the lab buildings. “CURRENTLY CLOSED,” it reads, in bold letters. “The office will reopen once Congress restores funding.”

But as the shutdown heads toward its fourth week, negotiations in Congress have not progressed. Both parties point fingers at the other, and neither is winning the battle of public opinion.

Workers here say they feel caught in that crossfire.

“It makes my heart hurt,” said the fire scientist. “We have some really top-notch scientists working incredibly hard for the public, to really advance things as quick as we can.”

Listen to the WPR report

Wisconsin wood scientists say government shutdown is stopping vital research was originally published by Wisconsin Public Radio.