After over 18 months of tireless efforts to push back against unnecessary security privatization, AFGE Local 556 members at Orlando Airport have finally seen the fruits of their labor.
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A man armed with homemade explosives, a machete, and a bottle of poison walked into the New Orleans airport last Friday and started attacking Transportation Security Officers.
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Federal employees at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement help to ensure that war crime violators have no place in the United States.
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The agency that’s tasked with protecting the American homeland is still on the brink of a shutdown after the House of Representatives last Friday decided to fund the Department of Homeland Security for only one week instead of the entire fiscal year. The short-term funding measure runs out this Friday after midnight, sending Congress back to square one and crippling the important work of TSA, Border Patrol, ICE, FEMA, Coast Guard, FPS and other DHS agencies.
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Two AFGE-backed bills have been introduced in the House and Senate this week to ensure that employees in the Department of Homeland Security will be paid retroactively should a departmentwide shutdown occur.
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The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) employees don’t need another threat of a shutdown to make them even more miserable. They are already the least happy group of employees in the federal government. DHS has been either at or near the bottom of every government wide employee satisfaction survey. That fact is once again pointed out by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), which put this chronic problem on its annual high-risk list for 2015.
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Being a TSA officer is not easy. It’s a highly stressful job because a single mistake could mean life or death for hundreds of people on board an airplane. And because of their crucial mission, you’d think that TSA officers would get all the support they need to do their job, right? Well, not exactly. Congress is actually threatening to shut down the Department of Homeland Security, the parent agency of TSA. And that means TSA officers will still have to work because their job is considered essential. They just won’t get paid.
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If Congress doesn’t fund the Department of Homeland Security by the end of this month, 30,000 employees will be furloughed. Even though many of the workers are considered essential employees and would have to show up to work, it is wrong to require people to work without pay.
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Over 10 years ago, when AFGE first started working with TSA Officers seeking to form a union, we heard one issue loud and clear at many of the large and urban airports: FREE PARKING.
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House Appropriations Committee Chairman Harold Rogers said House and Senate negotiators are wrapping up negotiations over government funding bills and are hoping to file a consolidated bill to fund all agencies except the Department of Homeland Security for the rest of fiscal 2015.
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Like most law enforcement officers, Border Patrol agents don’t know what’s in store for them when they head out to work each day. But for agents stationed along the southern U.S. border, the job is especially dangerous.
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The incoming chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee has been outspoken about his plans to cut federal employees’ pay and pensions. Besides his previous proposal, Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin spoke with the Washington Post this week and discussed what he wants to do when he takes over the committee in January.
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The Coast Guard has abandoned its plan to hand over control of its user fee collection operation at the National Vessel Documentation Center (NVDC) in Falling Waters, West Virginia, to a private business. This would not have happened without AFGE’s intervention at both local and national levels.
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Starving agencies of their needed funds could have deadly consequences when it comes to agencies responsible for preventing and fighting infectious diseases such as Ebola. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has been working on Ebola vaccine for a decade, but research stalled as Congress keeps taking away its funding – $5 billion over 10 years, adjusted for inflation.
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In response to the recent Ebola crisis and the heightened risk for Transportation Security Officers, Border Patrol agents and other federal employees, AFGE is urging the government to take all necessary measures to protect the public and government employees stationed at the U.S. ports of entry and other sites from potential exposure to the Ebola virus.
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