June 9, 2008
Alarming TSA Attrition Rates Prompt NTEU Concern
President Colleen M. Kelley said she is“deeply concerned” by a recent TSA report to Congress revealing that nearly 25 percent of the agency’s workforce leaves each year, an alarming statistic that NTEU believes calls for further congressional investigation into TSA’s discredited pay-for-performance system and its personnel practices.
The report provided a minimum amount of information and fails to address the link between TSA's Performance Accountability and Standards System (PASS) and its sky-high attrition rates, Kelley said. According to the report, turnover at TSA in 2007 was 21.2 percent, up 0.3 percent from 2006, but down from 2005’s rate of 23.7 percent.
“With roughly 8,000 of the approximately 40,000-member TSA workforce leaving each year, TSA is incurring astronomical and unnecessary costs of training and retraining, recruiting and hiring and loss of productivity due to this revolving door,” President Kelley said. “It is alarming that such a critical workforce is in a constant state of flux.”
According to TSA Officers (TSOs) represented by NTEU, PASS has resulted in arbitrary ratings with criteria that change continually, sometimes several times a year. Pay increases are lower than those other federal employees receive and uneven application of the PASS system leads to random removal of employees or placement in non-screening status, further demoralizing the workforce.
Additionally, NTEU has consistently pointed to problems with the image tests TSOs take as part of their ongoing training. The images are of extremely poor quality and do not match the images actually seen on the job resulting in a high failure rate. Responding to that criticism, TSA recently announced changes to that process. NTEU will continue working to ensure that this test, and all other training and testing, matches the real-world experiences faced by TSOs.
In the end, the solution to problems facing TSA employees, Kelley explained, is to place them on the General Schedule, the pay system covering the bulk of federal employees, and to extend to them collective bargaining rights.
“A stable TSA workforce is in the best interest of our country” she said. “There simply is no substitute for collective bargaining, which would provide employees with a truly meaningful voice in their work lives.”
For the complete story, click here or visit <www.DHSunion.org/TSA/TSA>.
TSA Administrator Says Morale Not a Problem
In a May 21 letter, TSA Administrator Kip Hawley declined a request by President Colleen M. Kelley to meet with NTEU to discuss employee morale and training issues. This request came in the wake of a Department of
Homeland Security (DHS) survey showing that TSA employees continue to lack confidence in management policies
and practices, despite being committed to their
agency’s overall mission.
According to management, ongoing internal efforts to improve and strengthen the agency are working. “While we appreciate your comments and concerns, TSA leadership will take the results of the survey and continue to ensure that progress on the issues most critical to the workforce are at the forefront of our priorities to ensure TSA’s mission success,” the letter reads.
Since TSA rebuffed the meeting offer, President Kelley will instead draft a series of open letters to Hawley highlighting NTEU’s concerns with workplace issues such as inadequate staffing and training, substandard recertification procedures and collective bargaining rights. These letters, once completed, will be shared with TSA employees through the DHS Update and posted on our TSA web page.
For more information, contact your chapter president or NTEU representative.
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