TSA salaries lagged significantly behind their counterparts elsewhere in government, and the agency suffered from low morale and high attrition. Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
The House’s DHS funding bill preserves TSA’s recent pay increases
Although lawmakers have yet to act on a bill to codify the Biden administration’s decision to provide Transportation Security Administration employees with Title 5 protections and compensation, Congress is poised to continue funding the initiative.
Recently implemented pay raises issued across the frontline Transportation Security Administration workforce appear set to continue under fiscal 2025 appropriations legislation scheduled for a vote this week on the House floor.
Since the agency’s inception, TSA employees have been part of a siloed personnel system, where they did not receive regular raises like most other federal workers, had only abridged access to collective bargaining, and lacked due process and whistleblower protections. As a result, their salaries lagged significantly behind their counterparts elsewhere in government, and the agency suffered from low morale and high attrition.
But in 2021, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas announced that TSA would administratively grant Title 5 rights to TSA workers, complete with access to the Merit Systems Protection Board, full federal-sector collective bargaining rights, and pay raises of up to 30% as the agency transitioned to a compensation system modeled after the General Schedule.
Those raises were initially funded to the tune of $400 million in the fiscal 2023 omnibus spending package, culminating in the raises reaching employees last June. In testimony before Congress in April, TSA Administrator David Pekoske thanked lawmakers for “annualizing” the funding for the pay raises and said the recent changes had already cut attrition nearly in half.
The House is scheduled to begin consideration of the fiscal 2025 Homeland Security Department Appropriations Act this week. GOP appropriators have set aside $11.5 billion for TSA, enough to continue paying for the agency’s new pay system and a $37 million increase over President Biden’s budget request.
“The Transportation Security Administration’s implementation of changes to the agency’s pay structure has caused dramatic increases to the agency’s budget, which have come at the expense of other priorities,” stated the House Appropriations Committee’s report on the bill. “This bill provides $198.4 million for aviation screening infrastructure to restore some of the cuts that were necessary to fund the agency’s pay structure changes. The bill also restores funding for canine and local law enforcement officer reimbursements.”
In a statement of the Biden administration’s position on the funding bill, the Office of Management and Budget said that the White House is opposed to a cavalcade of other provisions, including failing to fund implementation of the president’s recent executive orders on immigration and border security and a $168 million cut to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.