As hundreds of thousands of federal workers fretted on Friday about how they will pay bills amid the partial government shutdown, the missed pay-checks turned out to be particularly cruel for nearly three dozen employees at one obscure government agency. Because of an apparent clerical error, a federal division that processes pay-checks for a big chunk of the government workforce mistakenly paid about 30 employees at the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board. The District of Columbia-based board investigates industrial chemical accidents, but nearly all of the board’s employees have been furloughed during the government shutdown.
