FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 05, 2026
October 05, 2026
Contact:
AFGE Communications
[email protected]
TSA Rewards Officers for Working Unpaid Through Two Shutdowns by Taking Away Their Chairs. Now Travelers Can Tell TSA How They Feel.
Categories:
TSA
AFGE launches “Take a Stand” campaign asking the public to demand the chairs back, and dares TSA managers to stand for their whole shift too
WASHINGTON – The Transportation Security Administration has decided that the problem with airport security is chairs. The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) is asking every traveler who has ever handed over an ID at a checkpoint to help fix TSA leadership’s actual problem, which is its judgment. Starting today, anyone can Take a Stand and tell TSA to give officers their chairs back.
On Sept. 25, Steve Lorincz, TSA’s executive assistant administrator for security operations, ordered chairs removed from travel document checker podiums at airports nationwide “effective immediately.” His reasoning: “Maintaining a standing posture helps reinforce professionalism, attentiveness, and active engagement with passengers.” TSA told reporters the change “reinforces both our security posture and our commitment to hospitality.”
Read that again. TSA took chairs away from the people checking your ID and called it hospitality.
There is no security study behind this. There is no data showing a seated officer misses a fake ID that a standing officer would catch. A boarding pass reads the same at any height. What there is, according to AFGE TSA Council 100, is a workforce that already stands and walks on hard floors all day, now told to do it for hours at a podium with no relief, because a manager in Washington thinks it looks friendlier.
Then it got worse. Days after the chairs disappeared, officers were handed a “Security Operations Pledge of Service and Security” to sign, with their immediate supervisor countersigning. No TSA seal. No letterhead. Just a signature line. The pledge asks officers to promise to support “the well-being and morale of our colleagues.” TSA is asking officers to sign a pledge about morale in the same week it took their chairs. You cannot make this up. TSA did.
These are the same officers who kept America’s checkpoints open through two government shutdowns in the past year, much of that time without a paycheck. TSA’s thank-you was a pledge card and a sore back.
“Our officers screen millions of people a day and they do it right, sitting or standing,” said Hydrick Thomas, president of AFGE TSA Council 100. “Nobody who works a checkpoint asked for this. Nobody who flies asked for this. If TSA leadership truly believes standing makes people better at their jobs, I look forward to watching every manager in the building prove it for eight hours straight. We will bring the pledge. They can bring their own chair, if they are allowed one.”
“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,” said AFGE National President Everett Kelley. “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.”
For the public: Travelers can send a letter to TSA leadership asking the agency to restore chairs a 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.”
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