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Washington, D.C.— The most pressing need facing the troubled Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is the inadequate pay received by the frontline employees charged with our nation’s aviation security, the president of the union representing thousands of TSA employees told a House subcommittee today.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that Transportation Security Officers (TSOs) are paid some $1,700 per year less than their counterparts covered by the General Schedule pay system, President Colleen M. Kelley of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) told the House Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee in submitted testimony. When TSA was established in late 2001, it was given wide-ranging personnel latitude, including the right to establish its own pay system.

“We believe that upgrading TSO pay to reflect their mission-critical duties would lead to a distinct improvement in the agency’s ability to recruit and retain a highly-skilled and professional workforce,” Kelley said.

The NTEU leader called the agency’s Performance Accountability and Standards System (PASS) deeply flawed, and said it does not function as a performance-based system should—namely, by setting objective, measureable performance standards and specific incentives to be earned by meeting those standards at the outset of an appraisal period.

“Testing under the system does not reflect actual screening conditions and is not consistent with the training provided to TSOs,” Kelley said. “In short, performance assessment and skills testing are conducted in a way that demoralizes the workforce instead of promoting mission readiness.”

All of this, combined with uneven local airport implementation around the country of nationally-set policies is a reflection of the poor workforce management that has led TSOs to seek collective bargaining rights—a goal being strongly pursued by NTEU, Kelley said. “Collective bargaining helps to develop fair, credible and transparent processes without interfering with management rights to accomplish agency missions.”

President Kelley told lawmakers that TSA is also in desperate need of experienced, permanent leadership if TSA is to deal effectively with its workforce issues. “We hope to see quick action on another nomination in the near future,” Kelley said.

NTEU is the largest independent federal union, representing 150,000 employees in 31 agencies and departments.