TSA to cut thousands of screeners by fall

The Transportation Security Administration plans to eliminate the jobs of 6,000 passenger screeners by September, according to agency officials.

On March 28, TSA Administrator James Loy announced a workforce realignment plan that included paring the approximately 56,000-member screener workforce by 3,000 employees by May 31. Last Wednesday, Loy said another 3,000 employees would be trimmed from the workforce by the end of fiscal 2003.

Created in response to the Sept. 11 attacks, the 18-month-old agency hired its screener workforce in one year, meeting a congressionally mandated Nov. 19, 2002 deadline to federalize passenger screeners at the nation's 429 major airports. But Congress only approved 48,000 screeners and the agency's $5.98 billion fiscal 2003 budget only accommodates that number of employees. The agency has asked for $4.82 billion in fiscal 2004.

"While we still live in a dangerous world, it also is time to assess our workplace requirements in relation to budget realities," Loy said on April 30. "This means looking at the level of screener staffing at every airport, how many are part-time, how many are full-time, and whether they are on duty at the right time, when passenger traffic is heaviest."

Heather Rosenker, a TSA spokeswoman, said attrition may reduce the workforce before any real layoffs are needed, and employees will be given the chance to transfer to airports that are understaffed. Employees who transfer may receive a $5,000 stipend to help pay moving costs.

"This is the perfect opportunity for an agency like ours to look at rightsizing our organization, adjusting how our workforce works, and making sure we have the right numbers of folks during peak times," Rosenker said.

The agency will also look at switching some of the full-time staffers to part-time positions to help augment the workforce, which was hired as a full-time staff, Rosenker said. If attrition and transfers don't bring the numbers low enough, then the remaining ranks will be thinned on the basis of employee performance evaluations.

The use of evaluations as a way to reduce the workforce has resulted in many complaints by screeners to Bill Lyons, national union organizer for the American Federation of Government Employees.

"This was mismanaged from the beginning," Lyons said Monday. "When they first started this thing they said they wanted 48,000 screeners and it just kept going up and going up and going up, and now they realize they don't have the budget for it."

AFGE officials have been working with airport screeners to form a collective bargaining unit, despite Loy's assertion that he will not formally bargain with employee unions. Many screeners have voiced concerns about low morale, cronyism, management missteps and other issues.

"I'm a little bit nervous about it," Lyons said. "This will give more power to terminal managers to get rid of people they don't like and put their buddies in place."

Andrew Kluttz, a screener at Boston's Logan International Airport, which is scheduled to reduce its staff by 50 screeners, said Monday that he didn't anticipate layoffs at that facility and few of his co-workers were concerned about the downsizing exercise.

"We've lost enough people through resignation or terminations that many of them don't have an issue with it," Kluttz said. "I think they are just taking a wait-and-see approach."