Monday marks day six of the government shutdown as lawmakers have failed to agree on a spending package.
2025 has been a challenging year for Newark's airport, with equipment failures and staffing issues that have led to delays and cancellations.
Air traffic controllers are considered essential workers and continue to work throughout the shutdown without pay until Congress can reach a middle ground.
The worry is that the shutdown could lead to workers calling out sick.
Duffy said air traffic controllers at Newark have expressed concerns and the Department of Transportation has seen "slight tick ups in sick calls" from controllers across the country.
He said the sick calls from controllers have been spread out across the region and have not been from one specific airport or air traffic control facility, but there have been reductions of up to 50% in controller staffing in certain places.
The secretary did not indicate that any of these upticks have caused significant impacts on flights. He said if there are too many sick calls, they would be forced to reduce the number of flights into/out of the impacted airports or air space, which is what they routinely do at EWR when they do not have enough controllers.
"So absenteeism is a concern. Again, we've had it. We've had a few airports that we're tracking it. We don't have one facility that has had long term issues with the sick leave. But that is concerning to me," Duffy said. "And if someone has to take sick leave, to drive Uber to make the difference, those are decisions they're going to make themselves. But of course, that's concerning for us. "These are high skilled, high performing, safety driven professionals that I don't want them driving to work. I don't want them finding a second job to pay the bills. I want them to get paid for the work they're doing today, keeping our planes in the air and our sky safe."
National Air Traffic Controllers Association President Nick Daniels, who joined Duffy at the presser, echoed his thoughts and advocated for an end to the shutdown as well.
"I'm here to advocate for the end to the shutdown, we need to bring this shutdown to a close so that the Federal Aviation Administration and the committed aviation safety professionals can put this distraction behind us and completely focus on their vital work," Daniels said.
The Trump administration said it is prepared to follow through on a threat to initiate mass layoffs and make permanent federal spending cuts in an attempt to pressure unwavering Democrats.
Democrats have drawn a red line on health care, unwilling to fund the government unless Republicans repeal cuts to Medicaid and extend Affordable Care Act subsidies.
Republican leadership has signaled a willingness to negotiate on health care, but only if Democrats agree to reopen the government first. Both parties are pointing fingers for the holdup on the deal.
"I don't care about the blame game. I care about Americans losing their health insurance, rates of death going up, hospitals being crushed, and medical services ending in places in rural America. This is a tsunami of Donald Trump's creation," said Sen. Cory Booker.
As Congress aims to iron out a spending bill, 13,000 air traffic controllers will continue to work without pay.
Roughly 4 million federal workers could go without a paycheck during this shutdown.
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