The Transportation Security Administration’s unilateral decision to require TSA employees checking airline passenger IDs at security checkpoints to stand for the duration of their shifts is a change in working conditions that should have been negotiated first with the union, AFGE is arguing in a newly filed demand to bargain.
Transportation security officers previously were provided chairs while working at travel document checker podiums. Despite there being no reported issues with allowing officers to sit while checking IDs, the chairs were ordered removed “effective immediately” on Sept. 25 by Steve Lorincz, TSA’s executive assistant administrator for security operations.
His reasoning: “Maintaining a standing posture helps reinforce professionalism, attentiveness, and active engagement with passengers.” TSA later told reporters the change “reinforces both our security posture and our commitment to hospitality.”
AFGE Council 100 filed a demand to bargain over the change in working conditions on Oct. 8, arguing that removing the chairs affects personnel policies, practices, and/or conditions of employment for employees covered by our bargaining contract and must be subject to negotiation with the union per the contract.
Adding insult to injury, days after the chairs disappeared officers were handed a “Security Operations Pledge of Service and Security” to sign, with their immediate supervisor countersigning. The pledge asks officers to promise to support “the well-being and morale of our colleagues.”
“Steve Lorincz took the chairs out from under officers who kept this country flying through two shutdowns, and then TSA asked them to sign a pledge about morale,” AFGE National President Everett Kelley said in a press release. “That is not leadership. That is a punch line. Hospitality is not something you get by making working people stand at a podium until their feet go numb. Respect is how you keep good officers, and respect is how you keep travelers safe. TSA should put the chairs back today, and every traveler who agrees should tell them so.”
Forcing employees to stand for hours each day with no relief could jeopardize their health, according to a 2017 study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology. After tracking 7,320 workers in Ontario, Canada, over a period of 12 years, researchers concluded that “occupations involving predominantly standing were associated with an approximately 2-fold risk of heart disease compared with occupations involving predominantly sitting.”
“It’s shocking that the TSA would impose this health risk upon their employees,” Dr. Turner Osler, an emeritus professor at the University of Vermont who has written about the dangers of prolonged sitting on workers, told the news outlet UNILAD. “Because sitting is known to be a health risk, many people reasonably assume standing is the healthy alternative to sitting. But the evidence says otherwise.”
AFGE is asking members of the public to send a letter to TSA leadership asking the agency to restore chairs at document checker podiums nationwide. As the letter puts it, “A seated officer checks a boarding pass and an ID just as carefully as a standing one.”
AFGE has been lobbying on Capitol Hill regarding this issue, and on Friday, Oct. 9 a group of Republican members of Congress led by Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH) sent a letter asking TSA to “immediately reverse” its standing policy for TSA officers.
Written by OPEIU 2 AFL-CIO
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