Alfunzo Staley

Passenger Screener
Detroit Metropolitan Airport (DTW)

My name is Alfunzo Staley, and until two weeks ago, I worked as a screener at Detroit Metropolitan Airport.

For all of my adult life, I've served in some capacity in the United States Armed Forces, and it was the same values-honor, courage and commitment-that led me to seek employment with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). Right out of high school, I signed up with the Marine Corps, where I proudly served for 15 years, serving in the 1991 Gulf War, and leaving as a sergeant with an honorable discharge.

I was only out of the Marines a few months before I started to miss being part of the military, so I joined the Air Force Reserve, and worked by day as a lineman for Detroit Edison, the regional electric company.

It was on September 11th, 2001, that I completed my Air Force paramedic training. On that very day, for the first time in more than 100 years, the mainland of our country was attacked by a foreign enemy. In the aftermath of those attacks, the American people demanded that airport security be entrusted to federal workers, and taken out of the hands of private contractors. Suddenly, defense of the homeland was priority number one, and if I could contribute to that cause in my daily work life, I wanted in.

When Congress created the TSA, I applied for a job almost right away at Detroit Metropolitan. When I received word that I had been accepted for the lead screener position I had applied for, I was happy as could be.

Little did I know the trouble ahead of me. How could I have known of the disrespect by TSA higher-ups for veterans and members of the military? I had foolishly figured that we vets and reservists were exactly the kind of workers that a security agency would have wanted.

It started with my first TSA training class, when I noticed I was classified as a screener, not the more senior "lead screener" position I had applied for. When I got my paycheck, I noticed it wasn't right. Turns out they had me listed as a lead screener at the Lansing airport, and were marking me absent. Now, I never applied for a job at Lansing. I have lived in Detroit, Michigan, all my life, and have no intention of living anywhere else. Why on earth would I take a job in Lansing?

Meanwhile, they also had me listed as a regular screener at the Detroit Airport. In other words, they had my records all messed up from the get-go. Still, they refused to grant me the veterans' preference to which all vets are entitled when they work for the federal government. That preference should have bumped me back up to the "lead screener" position I had applied for in the first place.

But that's just the small stuff. Things got really interesting when my reserve unit was activated in the months leading up to Operation Iraqi Freedom. When TSA hired me, I made it clear that I was in the reserves. I was led to believe that would be no problem.

In November, my reserve unit was put on notice, meaning that within 24-48 hours of receiving notice from the Air Force, we would be expected to show up on base. I notified my supervisors of my status.

When our unit began to prepare for possible deployment overseas, my commander insisted that we paramedics take additional training in treatment for exposure to chemical weapons. The military brass fully expected us to be hit with chemical weapons on the Iraqi battlefield, and my job was going to be to treat our soldiers in the field when the unspeakable happened.

I presented my orders to my TSA supervisors, and they told me that since my training schedule conflicted with my work schedule, I could not go to my reserve training. Now, as any of you who have served in the military know, refusing an order from your commander is not an option. So, I attended my training, submitting the appropriate forms, and requesting "leave without pay" for those days, as is my right per federal law.

TSA instead deducted those days from my annual leave, sometimes coding them as military leave-which I was saving for my annual two-week tour-or as vacation days. On several occasions, they even wrote me up as AWOL-a no-show-at my job. And this happened month after month, even though I always gave my TSA supervisors notice of my training schedule as soon as it was provided to me.

More than once when I submitted my leave request form, I was told that it was lost. Then the supervisor in charge of the process would fill the form out in her own hand, and have me sign it. Then, once I was out of sight, she would add things in the "remarks" portion of the form that contradicted the sort of leave I had requested.

Like that wasn't bad enough, when they coded my forms for military leave that I had not requested, they then unlawfully deducted that leave from my vacation days.

As things turned out, I have not-so far--had to go overseas. But I lost my job, anyway. You see, things at TSA are rarely done in a straightforward manner, but apparently my service to my country marked me as a troublemaker for TSA. For when TSA decided that it had hired too many screeners and had to lay some off, my name was tacked onto that group, despite the fact that my seniority should have prevented my name from making the list. In fact, I'm told that when the typed list of workers slated for lay-offs was circulated among supervisors at my work site, my name was handwritten at the bottom of the sheet.

I'll never know whether my involvement with the union played a role in my termination from TSA. When the terrible state of the workforce at TSA became apparent, I helped to spread the word about AFGE's campaign to organize us.

Federal law requires federal agencies to award "leave without pay" status to members of the Armed Forces Reserves who are called to duty. Instead, TSA awarded me "AWOL" status.

Federal law also requires federal employers to restore members of an activated unit to their positions once their full-time active duty has concluded. TSA never gave me the opportunity to be restored; they canned me before the Air Force had a chance to deploy me.

If you ask me, that's one heck of a way to protect the homeland.

Return to Transportation Security Administration

Do you see a mistake or inaccuracy in this page? Please report it.