TSA union urges more funding
Protest outside Bush airport comes amid worker shortage
The union representing Transportation Security Administration officers picketed outside Bush Intercontinental Airport on Sunday, asking the government to increase funding for the agency that is facing a shortage of workers amid rising security demands.
“When you’re shortstaffed and you’ve got a limited number of people to work two or three positions, how are they going to help that mother that’s got three kids and trying to get on the plane?” said Cynthia Sanders, a union member and former transportation security officer. “We’re short-staffed. You did that to yourself, TSA — that wasn’t us.”
The small group of former officers who protested with Houston’s chapter of the American Federation of Government Employees union pushed for funding to hire an additional 6,000 workers.
The TSA has buckled down on security protocols in the wake of growing terror threats around the world. Coupled with high employee turnover and staff shortages, wait times in security checkpoints have grown longer, prompting irritation from airline passengers and congressional critics.
In some cases, security checkpoint lines have been so long that travelers have missed their flights, as happened to about 450 people at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport on May 15.
Since 2013, airports have employed fewer screeners while trying to accommodate 15 percent more passengers.
The Houston protest mirrored those held at airports across the country in recent weeks.
Timothy Harris, a 27-year-old former transportation security officer, said he thinks hiring more screeners would reduce the number of passengers frustrated with long wait times at security checkpoints.
“(The TSA is) living off the minimum,” Harris said. “You get people standing next to you and you’re doing your job, but they’re not moving. Frustration levels have escalated.”
TSA Administrator Peter Neffenger experienced a brief victory when he recently secured 1,600 posi-
tions that were in danger of being cut and got $8 million in congressional funding to hire 768 new screeners.
Neffenger was appointed to the agency last year after agency screeners failed a series of tests to detect potential security threats.
Because of congressional budget cuts, the nation’s airports employ about 5,000 fewer screeners than in 2011.
“That’s not enough, and that partly came through the misinterpretation of the budgeting process by my friends and colleagues in Congress,” Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee said. “We lost a lot of our individuals. That’s not good.”