Report: Low wages and a pay structure with little hope for reaching higher levels among problems with screener recruitment and retention. Image: Jason Ogulnik/Shutterstock.com
By: FEDweek StaffA special commission created by the TSA to examine the agency’s long-standing problems with recruitment and retention has said that pay is “a key issue” for screeners, who make up the bulk of the agency’s workforce.
Issues it cited include that salaries are inadequate for the local areas, the gap between pay of front-line and supervisory/managerial employees, and a pay structure that “provides little hope” of advancement to higher levels.
The report also recommended changes to hiring practices, selection of supervisors and a variety of other practices. It did not recommend moving screeners into the GS system, however, saying that the agency instead should use its special pay authorities “to improve the TSA pay system so that it operates at a level superior to the GS system.” The TSA said it will use the report as a roadmap for change and that some of the recommendations match initiatives already under way.
Meanwhile, at a House hearing a witness from the DHS inspector general’s office said that TSA also suffers from shortcomings in its recruitment efforts and its failure to use all the retention tools available to it. The witness said that that large-category airports, which account for nine-tenths of screeners, have a turnover rate of 17 percent and that at the rest, the rate is 19 percent; among part-time employees, the overall rate is 26 percent. This requires the agency to constantly recruit, hire and train large number of employees, many of whom leave shortly afterward, he said.
Limitations of the current special TSA pay system contribute, he said—at two hard-to-hire airports, TSA pays as much as 31 percent below the per capita income amount for the area—but other problems include: failure to analyze and share exit survey data to understand why screeners leave and to respond; failure to make clear to applicants before hiring undesirable aspects of the job such as scheduling demands or details of tasks including pat-down procedures; and a lack of “focus on career development opportunities for TSOs to promote interest and long-term loyalty.”
The AFGE union put heavier stress on the pay issue, though, noting that in the annual Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey, TSA came in last in its category of agencies in terms of employee satisfaction with pay. TSA employees also “provided remarkably low scores on the fairness of leadership, matching employee skills to the mission, performance-based rewards and advancement, and teamwork and innovation,” it said.
Both the IG and the union said that understaffing is resulting in something of a vicious circle, with steps the agency takes to fill needs, such as juggling work schedules, creating more dissatisfaction and thus higher turnover.
