Las Vegas, NV, June 6 2016 - Transportation Security Administration screener trainees attend a training session Image: Jason Ogulnik/Shutterstock.com
By: FEDweek StaffTwo House committee chairmen have proposed to end the special personnel policies for TSA screeners that have been in effect since the agency’s creation in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.
HR-1140 would end the separate pay-for-performance system for screeners and move them into the GS; grant them full collective bargaining rights; and give them the same disciplinary appeal rights as federal employees in general. The more restrictive policies in those areas were designed initially to give management greater control over the new in-house screener workforce but they have been blamed for years as contributing to low morale and high turnover. Similar proposals have been introduced in prior years but have not advanced with the House then under Republican leadership.
“It’s time to bring TSA’s personnel and labor management systems in line with the rest of the federal government under Title 5. By improving TSO workforce protections, we will be improving frontline workforce morale and improving our national security,” said sponsor Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., chair of the House Homeland Security Committee.
“These roughly 44,000 federal employees have been denied basic worker rights and protections for far too long, and it is long overdue that they receive the same treatment as their fellow employees across the federal government,” said Rep. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., chair of the Appropriations Committee.
Separately, bipartisan legislation (HR-1171) has been offered to assure that all airline security fees be used only for funding TSA and other security options—portions have been diverted to other uses—and to allow the agency to use such fees to keep screeners in paid status in any future partial shutdown.
