Summary
TSA officers are quitting and missing work as a funding standoff forces them to continue airport security screening without pay, straining operations during a Homeland Security shutdown that began on Valentine’s Day. The shutdown is the third in less than six months to force Transportation Security Administration officers who screen passengers and luggage to keep working without pay, while the public experiences the fallout in longer wait times at some airports.
Homeland Security reported that at least 376 TSA employees have quit since the shutdown began, and the departures are worsening staffing turnover at an agency that has historically had high attrition and low morale. TSA officers are considered essential and therefore must continue showing up whether they get paid or not, union leaders and federal officials said.
In Boise, Idaho, union leader Cameron Cochems, vice president of his local American Federation of Government Employees chapter and an officer with more than four years on the job, said the resignations likely do not fully capture the broader personnel strain. “It’s just exhausting. Every day it just feels like this weight gets heavier and heavier on us,” Cochems told The Associated Press.
Cochems said many officers are staying even as they cut back on expenses, and he described the shutdown’s impact on household finances. He said he already supplements his income with a seasonal side job screening college sports teams at airports, but that even that additional work is not enough now that his TSA paychecks are halted. Cochems said the financial pressure escalated further after his wife was laid off two weeks ago.
At the same time, absenteeism has risen. Homeland Security said roughly 50,000 TSA employees would work during the shutdown, and nationwide on Thursday about 10% of TSA agents missed work, the department reported. The absentee rate was higher at some airports, including 33% at Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport, 29% at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, 27% at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport, and 23% at Baltimore-Washington International Airport.
Union leaders at multiple airports described healthcare and daily-cost pressures from unpaid work. In Atlanta, Aaron Barker, a local TSA union leader, said officers cannot afford copayments for cancer treatments or office visits for sick children, speaking at a news conference outside the airport this week. Homeland Security said TSA officers missed their first full paycheck last weekend, as the staffing shortages continued into the shutdown.
The House Committee on Homeland Security has scheduled a hearing for Wednesday to review the partial shutdown’s impact across the department, including the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the U.S. Coast Guard. The current funding lapse affects only the Department of Homeland Security, and both chambers of Congress are scheduled to be out of Washington during the first two weeks of April, according to the reporting.
Democrats have said the department will not receive funding until new restrictions are placed on federal immigration operations following fatal shootings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minneapolis earlier this year. It remains unclear, from the reporting, how long airport screeners will continue working without pay.
The staffing strain has also left airport conditions increasingly unpredictable for travelers. Wait times have stretched into multiple hours at some airports, with passengers in cities including Houston, Atlanta and New Orleans reporting delays long enough to miss flights, and checkpoints have closed in some locations, contributing to swings in wait times throughout the day.
At Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta, for example, the reporting described checkpoints shifting from longer lines early Friday to brief waits by early afternoon, followed by the wait times jumping again later. In Houston, security-line waits at the main airport exceeded two hours Friday afternoon, and videos posted to social media showed long lines extending around the airport and spilling into the baggage-claim area.
In a Fox News interview this week, acting Deputy TSA Administrator Adam Stahl warned that the latest shutdown could have lasting consequences for TSA staffing, saying attrition and recruitment would likely suffer. Stahl said attrition increased after the previous shutdown and warned it could continue to worsen unless DHS funds the agency and pays TSA officers. The Associated Press also reported that former TSA Administrator John Pistole said about 1,100 officers quit during last year’s shutdown that ended in November.