As the Department of Homeland Security shutdown reaches the one-month mark with no end in sight, AFGE leaders are calling on Congress to ensure all DHS workers are paid.
All employees at the Transportation Security Administration, Federal Emergency Management Agency, U.S. Coast Guard, and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency – and some employees at Customs and Border Protection – are working without a paycheck for the third time since October due to a lapse in appropriations.
The shutdown has had an immediate impact on airport travelers, as many transportation security officers are struggling to afford to make it to work while not being paid. News outlets have reported on long lines at many airports due to TSO absences – and it’s likely to get worse unless Congress intervenes.
“As the financial pressure grows, more workers will be forced into impossible choices. The lines will get longer. The delays will get worse. The officers who haven’t left for more reliable employment will carry the burden of a system that treats them as expendable,” AFGE National President Everett Kelley said in an op-ed published March 9 on MSNOW.
The situation is becoming so dire that airports and non-profit groups are calling on members of the public to help TSOs who are struggling to make ends meet. The Denver International Airport is asking its customers to donate grocery and gas gift cards to help TSA officers going without pay, while the Anne Arundel County Food Bank in Maryland prepared hundreds of food boxes for TSA officers going without pay at Baltimore’s Thurgood Marshall Airport.
Congress can prevent federal workers from going without pay during this and future budget disputes by passing the Shutdown Fairness Act (H.R. 7137, S. 3168), which would ensure that civilian, military, and certain contractor employees are paid during government shutdowns.
“Repeated pay interruptions erode morale and make recruitment harder. They drive experienced employees out of public service. They discourage the next generation of air traffic controllers, cybersecurity professionals and law enforcement officers from stepping forward. You cannot run a modern government on uncertainty and promises of eventual backpay,” President Kelley wrote in an op-ed published March 10 in The Hill.
Some organizations and news outlets are exploiting the current shutdown to call on the government to privatize security operations at more airports, arguing that this makes them immune from future shutdown threats. But AFGE TSA Council 100 President Hydrick Thomas warned that turning back the clock to how airport security was run before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks would be a recipe for disaster.
“Privatization does not remove politics from security. It inserts a profit-taking middleman and shifts incentives toward cutting labor costs and training time while the public bears the risk,” Thomas wrote in a letter to the editor published March 4 in The Washington Post. “If policymakers are frustrated by recent disruptions, the answer is straightforward: Stop using the traveling public and frontline security workers as leverage in funding fights. The problem is political dysfunction, not the existence of a federal workforce.”
AFGE has mounted one of its most aggressive campaigns in recent memory to fight for Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officers and other Department of Homeland Security (DHS) employees who have been working without pay since the DHS funding lapse on Feb. 14.
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In a significant win, a federal judge on Friday granted a motion filed by the AFGE National Veterans Affairs Council to enforce a preliminary injunction order reinstating the collective bargaining contract covering more than 300,000 employees.
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On March 26, Dennis “Sarge” Guerrero, of AFGE Local 3511, traveled to Capitol Hill to testify on the need for the Department of Veterans Affairs to stop its plan to downgrade VA police officers.
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