The chair of the House Homeland Security Committee, Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., has sent a letter to TSA administrator Kip Hawley raising a number of questions about the agency’s recently signed HR contract with Lockheed Martin.
The agency announced in early July that it awarded Lockheed a $1.2 billion, eight-year contract for a variety of HR functions including recruitment and hiring, personnel and payroll processing, employee benefits, workforce management and help desk services.
In his letter, Thompson cautioned that problems plaguing the TSA screener workforce could "not be outsourced away" and seeks more detailed information on the contact than has been made available.
The National Treasury Employees Union was quick to place the contract in the context of a recent TSA inspector general report calling for more effective internal systems, processes and controls to address employee workplace concerns, and renewed its call for collective bargaining rights for screeners.
Hawley has acknowledged problems with the agency’s performance system, the so-called performance accountability and standards system, or PASS.
Hawley implemented changes to the system in April, such as the removal of requirement to sign-in for fitness duty, calling the system "far too complicated," and adding that it "distracted the workforce from its primary mission with its confusing procedures and burdensome administrative and testing requirements."
