Securing America's Transportation Systems: The Target of Terrorists and TSA's New Direction

9/23/2010

House Homeland Security Committee

Madam Chair, thank you for allowing me to offer a statement at today’s important hearing about the Transportation Security Administration. As National President of the National Treasury Employees Union, I represent several thousand Transportation Security Administration Officers at TSA. The problems that were anticipated when TSA was created in a hurry after 9/11 have now become more apparent and more troubling. The employees have little or no voice in how things happen at TSA, and too often intimidation is used as a management technique. We hope that the Administration will change this situation by granting collective bargaining rights by directive in the very near future. In addition, we look forward to passage of HR 1881, co-sponsored by you and Rep. Lowey and Chairman Thompson, for a permanent change to full Title 5 protections for our TSA Officers.

There are six areas that we believe need immediate attention:

• COLLECTIVE BARGAINING: A workforce that is engaged and feels valued is in everyone’s best interest. NTEU’s number one priority is in achieving collective bargaining rights for TSA Officers. There have been so many misconceptions of what collective bargaining would mean at TSA, that I feel I should address the topic. Chapter 71 of Title 5 of the U.S. Code sets out a detailed system for federal employee labor-management relations. The system is designed so that the business of the federal government can carry on with as little disruption as possible when there is a dispute. Strikes are expressly forbidden by statute. A union that has anything to do with even suggesting a strike is not allowed to represent government workers. Management retains the right to hire, assign, lay off, retain, promote, suspend and/or remove employees. These are excluded from collective bargaining. Management has the right to unilaterally determine what qualifications are required for any assignment.

Federal labor relations are set up so that the mission of every agency is of paramount importance. Employees can bargain about the procedures an agency uses, but it cannot bargain about the mission. Chapter 71 specifically states that management has the right to take whatever actions may be necessary to carry out the agency mission during emergencies.

Customs and Border Protection Officers have had collective bargaining rights for 30 years, and work in the same airports as TSA employees, doing similar work, without ever weakening national security. In addition, private sector employees that currently provide screening functions at several U.S. airports have retained broader private sector collective bargaining rights since before the creation of TSA.

NTEU recently conducted a survey of TSA Officers which found that 85 percent of TSA employees believe that collective bargaining rights would improve the effectiveness of TSA. Collective bargaining would give TSA Officers a voice in their workplace and allow them to work jointly with TSA leadership to devise uniform, fair, and transparent personnel procedures that will improve overall job satisfaction and morale of the workforce. Collective bargaining would provide TSA with a tested and well-defined process for ensuring fair treatment, addressing issues with appraisals, evaluations, testing and pay, provide for a fair and transparent scheduling process and give employees a hand in improving workplace safety.

• PAY: The pay system at TSA, the Performance Accountability and Standards System (PASS) must be eliminated. Every year, when the PASS payouts have been distributed, my office is flooded with calls from TSA Officers who are surprised and confused about how their ratings were determined and demoralized by the arbitrary nature of the payments. In addition, since most of the workforce has very low base salaries, the “merit” increases are insignificant. The yearly certification test, upon which part of PASS is based, fails to measure an officer’s true on-the-job performance and skills and needs to be completely rethought. We believe that TSOs should be under the same General Schedule system as most other federal employees.

A significant part of the PASS rating is based on the Practical Skills Evaluations (PSE) testing. The problems with the PSE testing are myriad and ongoing. Officers are generally told whether they passed or failed, but they typically are not told why. First time failure rates are high -- 70 to 80 percent at many locations-- yet almost everyone passes the second time. This leads to the conclusion that PSEs are not designed to test skills at all (at least not the first time), but to reduce PASS payouts because the first time failures negatively impact the overall year-end PASS score, which determines bonuses. Many officers report that they have failed PSEs, when they have followed the pat-down, or baggage search protocol that they been taught and used for years. Most importantly, officers believe that the PSE tests do not accurately reflect the real life conditions and therefore are not an accurate assessment of their skills and knowledge.

• TRAINING: TSA must standardize and improve training and remediation efforts. Given the importance of their jobs, it is hard to believe that the training system at TSA is as haphazard as it is. Most of the training is on-line, without benefit of the experience of a more senior officer. Often, the training center is far from the actual workplace, and training often happens on the employee’s own time. Training and testing on image recognition do not reflect real life conditions, rendering it ineffective and sometimes useless.

When tests are done in baggage screening, the results are not shared with the testees. They may be told they have flunked, but they are not told why, or what they missed, or how to do a better job the next time. Before the annual recertification tests, (the PSEs), there is always a rush to train. Again, the training is often inadequate. Standard Operating Procedure at one airport is not the same as at another. During the last round of PSEs, there were many arguments about whether a person had passed the test or not. TSA should be providing clear guidance and assistance to help its employees improve performance.

• LEAVE: At TSA, if an employee takes sick leave or leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), even if the reason is unquestionably legitimate and approved by his or her supervisor, it is deemed an “occurrence”. Occurrences count against your PASS score, and too many occurrences result in leave restriction.

Although FMLA is a national law, at TSA, interpretation of the law depends on who is in charge. Some Federal Security Directors make sure the law is followed. Some do not appear to understand the law at all. NTEU had to teach local managers about FMLA, but new problems continue to crop up. In some airports now, TSA Officers are routinely put on leave restriction if they are taking FMLA. We are working to overturn these decisions. Another new wrinkle is that TSA Officers who have been on FMLA are being forced to undergo new background checks in order to return to duty. We believe this is against the law and are trying to find out if this is a TSA directive or one of the many byzantine rules implemented by local airport TSA personnel.

• WORKER’S COMP: At TSA, managers and supervisors have found that the best way to reduce injuries is to stop the employees from reporting them. The situation is so bad that NTEU has issued a paper on Workers Compensation for TSA Officers that starts out, “Do not let anyone in supervision talk you out of filing (the initial form). It is not discretionary on their part”. Statements of injury are often questioned, and in many airports, the person who reports an injury is treated as a pariah. In some cases, TSA Officers continue to “work hurt” because a TSO who is injured on the job is often told to just find another job. There are even reports that contacting OSHA with a safety concern can result in a suspension or demotion.

• LABOR-MANAGEMENT RELATIONS: The recent dismal showing of TSA in the “Best Places to Work” survey serves as a confirmation of what I have heard from my members about conditions at TSA. Out of 224 agencies, TSA ranks 220 – almost at the bottom. Very low scores for effective leadership and a family-friendly culture emphasize that major changes need to take place at TSA. Employees’ perceptions are that senior leaders (FSDs, AFSDs and Security Managers) misuse their authority, exercise it inconsistently, and show little regard for employees’ ideas about how to do the work better. There is also a sense that work rules are too rigid, not taking into account personal emergencies or other circumstances beyond an employee’s control.

The good part of the “Best Places” survey is that it shows that TSA Officers believe in their mission and love what they do. Many TSA Officers came to the agency after 9/11, instilled with a passion to keep our nation safe. They go to work every day wanting to contribute to our security. We welcome Mr. Pistole to TSA and hope that we can work together to make the agency better. No organization would be happier than NTEU to find that, in next year’s survey, TSA is in the top 10 in The Best Places to Work.