Mention the Transportation Security Administration [TSA], and most people think of heavy-handed security, mistreatment of passengers, and violations of civil rights. What George Bush began in the wake of the 9/11 attacks as an attempt to codify airport security across the country and bring peace of mind has become a sort of monstrosity of controversial body scanners and TSA officers in the news stealing property and molesting elderly passengers.
But aside from the carefully crafted pronouncements from TSA bureaucracy, few in the public know the inner workings of the TSA, what Bush established, and what Obama has continued. So the public's justified scrutiny and sometimes justified ire is heaped pile upon pile onto the shoulders of TSA underlings - the officers we all encounter at the various airports.
In fact, the recent release of an updated "prohibited items" list to allow some pocket knives, baseball bats, and golf clubs reveal more about the inner working of this insular, remote agency, which seems to have no connection with the real world of airline staff, passengers, and including its own agency officers.
Worse, the TSA doesn't seem to want any connection with the real world or the public.
George W Bush created the Transportation Security Administration with the Aviation & Transportation Security Act of 2001. A year later, the Dept of Homeland Security [DHS] was created with the Homeland Security Act of 2002. These statutes are important to understand for their controversial nature: and, like other Bush policies on the so-called war on Terror, Obama has continued them in letter and spirit, and then exceeded his predecessor.
Unlike the rest of the federal government, TSA officers were kept off the General Schedule [GS] pay scale and initially excluded from collective bargaining rights. This is a classic, new world order, global South model whereby management is empowered to do what it wants, even excusing itself from DUI's, failed drugs tests, sexual harassment charges, while the laboring class - the workers - are routinely written up, disciplined, and fired with little recourse.
Obama came in to office with an inclusive, populist rhetoric, which gullible people who believe change comes from above ate up like pigs at the trough. Unlike his Republican predecessors, Obama's language did not employ the usual divisiveness of color against color nor did he seek to demonize the poor. But his actual willingness to cut into social programs belies his rhetoric.
This same dichotomy extends to the TSA officers, who fair no better. Like the neoliberal he is, Obama continues the Reagan/Thatcher revolution to undermine workers, drive labor costs to the least common denominator, and empower management and global capital to maximize quarterly stock reports at whatever expense.
This is neoliberalism, and it has its own logic once you follow its course. So rhetoric aside, it demands workers rights [and wages] be curtailed and undermined, and this has obvious implications to democratic principles.
Obviously it goes without saying following the neoliberal doctrine that a public agency, like the TSA, must be immune from public scrutiny and popular control.
Barrage of Tests
After years of clamoring for fair assessments, collective bargaining rights, and to be put on the GS pay scale, TSA officers did win some concessions from Obama’s appointee, TSA Administrator John Pistole.
The concessions came with restrictions. Officers won collective bargaining rights but not the ability to negotiate how TSA officers are assessed—this is considered a security issue and therefore falls under “management rights.” Nor can they bargain wages—these are set by Congress, and pay starts low, at around $12 an hour. As in other federal agencies, TSA is an open shop, meaning officers choose to join or not join.
According to the Aviation & Transportation Security Act, TSA officers must be “assessed” yearly. TSA upper bureaucrats have decided this means a constant barrage of testing. Currently TSA officers are subjected to three separate tests to ensure competence. It takes nearly a whole year to assess each officer.
The consequence for failing any one of these tests is termination. Two of the three have been highly criticized by TSA officers: a practical skills examination (PSE) and a quiz called the Screening Operations Procedures Assessment (SOPA). The third test is an X-ray imaging test called the Image Mastery Assessment.
The PSE is a hands-on demonstration of various procedures officers do at airport checkpoints, like pat-downs and bag checks. Officers are in a room with two management-appointed testers and must demonstrate proficiency and commit no so-called “critical errors.” A critical error results in a failure.
The controversy among TSA officers is that if an officer claims to have done a complete procedure but the management-assigned tester says he did not, the tester’s word is taken. Calls to have the examination videotaped to allow an “instant replay” have been road-blocked.
The SOPA is a 30-or-more-question, multiple-choice quiz. It is controversial among TSA officers because many questions are ambiguous, making it tricky to identify the best answer, and because some questions don’t seem relevant to security in the first place.
The X-ray imaging test is less controversial. At many airports, officers are allowed to practice on TSA software to prepare. (While there is equivalent preparation for the PSE, none exists for the SOPA.) However, the preparation software is to the actual X-ray test as a Dr. Seuss book is to a John Steinbeck novel. And the difficulty of the tests seems only to increase.
Again, failure to identify a percentage of images correctly is a failure. This seems like a reasonable consequence for TSA officers hired to screen passengers and baggage, but I am reminded of my college biology course.
The professor made it clear from day one that this biology course was for liberal arts and fine arts students, not for aspiring doctors. It was to meet a university requirement and to give us a good foundation in science. If this same professor had given us as a final exam his tests from his pre-med course, we would have largely failed.
Does the TSA want liberal arts students or pre-meds? The hiring, training, and tests need to conform to clear standards and desired outcomes.
TSA might argue only a fraction of its officers at each airport may be terminated due to failing any one of these tests; the pall it sets over the whole workplace is thick and full of anxiety.
In 2012, Congressional Republicans demanded a 40%-50% cut in the TSA workforce. While TSA Administrator Pistole has rejected this as excessive, he has not defended the hiring of the agency so far and has himself announced layoffs of 6,000, or about 12%.
But this 12% cut is misleading. Pistole is targeting 6,000 officers to be removed through the front door, but how many will be removed under the guise of their stringent, less-than-transparent testing protocols?
Obama may very well be targeting 40% for removal as he makes concession after concession to the neoliberal model. But even half of that would be a scandal if this liberal doyen endorsed such a number openly, so better to use the front and back doors and continue to fool his gullible supporters.
Business Unions to the Rescue of Management
The union is of little help.
Even in a better world with a better union, any union would be hard pressed to effectively represent its rank-in-file under such conditions as Bush and Obama set. But we aren't living in a better world: we live in the world of business unions. By a vote of TSA officers between two competing unions, the American Federation of Government Employees/[AFGE] AFL-CIO, won.
Business unions, a logical outgrowth of the war against militant trades-unionism, where the militants were weeded out, exterminated, and deported.
Business unions are at best junior partners to neoliberal goals. They are not about worker control, worker self management, and creating a more just economic system with workers and communities at the center of power. That is socialism.
Generally, the agenda of business unions, like AFGE, is reduced to issuing White Papers and supporting Business Political Candidates at election time. Where possible in the private sector, their sole mission is increasing wages and profit sharing [i.e., taking a cut of those quarterly profits] not increasing worker power or organizing social justice.
AFGE crossed the victory line and announced to TSA officers it had won ... an increase in their clothing allowance (an increase which recent austerity cuts may repeal, like the 0.5% raise). There were understandably no rousing cheers from the ungrateful rabble who had other things on their minds.
Given the nothing that AFGE has done for TSA officers, it follows the rank-in-file are proportionally disgusted with unions in general, and AFGE in particular. That's not only due to the tepid agenda of business unions but also the success of elite propaganda, which disparages unionism as a special interest and seeks to undermine its effectiveness. TSA officers have been reluctant to join, pay dues, to a business union that seems incapable of doing anything.
Wide Hiring Net
Who are these TSA officers?
With the possible exception of the TSA Federal Security Directors assigned to each airport, TSA has not made a point of hiring security officials. The net it casts in hiring is pretty broad. Kids right out of high school. Young veterans right out of their term of service in the military. Some people near retirement, some at retirement, some former second- and third-career professionals who were downsized in one of our frequent recessions.
Since the pay is kept low by excluding TSA from the GS pay scale and new officers often start out as part time employees, TSA seems to have no desire for security professionals. Arguably the rank-and-file are the WalMart associates of the federal system, and treated as such.
Which begs scrutiny of these extreme testing protocols. Arguably, if the TSA were really that concerned with these competencies wouldn't they recruit former law enforcement officers and military police and pay them commensurate to their skills rather than higher a young high school graduate then submit them to a battery of tests?
The flying public knows little if any of these facts. They aren't meant to. The TSA and our pubioc agencies are looking more and more like the private tyrannies that exist as most corporations - insulated, heavily managed from the top down, and impenetrable by the public generally or its laboring classes. The TSA bureaucrats are only interested in spin and issuing directives that seem to have no connection with reality. Their allies in the neoliberal news media seek to undermine anything that smells of public services, like school teachers and postal workers, and lauding Wall Street's escalation of the class war. Our unions, like AFGE, is mute in practice. So the public should not be surprised if some day they come to the airport and find TSA officers in orange aprons greeting them with a management-enforced smile.
[A shorter version of this appeared in the magazine LABOR NOTES.]
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