The passage of a bill this week to end a months-long shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) should avoid further disruption at the nation’s airports, at least for now.
But travel industry and union officials representing Transportation Security Administration (TSA) workers say long-term damage has been done and a more permanent solution is needed to ensure the agency and the travel industry as a whole are not continued to be used as pawns in political disputes.
“More than 1,100 TSA employees have already retired, morale is low and our preparations have been set back with only weeks until the World Cup,” U.S. Travel Association President and CEO Jeff Freeman said in a statement. “We will come out of this mess weaker, not stronger.”
In fact, Zane Kirby, president of the American Association of Travel Advisers, said, “Depending on where recent TSA job losses are concentrated, and how quickly qualified candidates can be secured, trained, and hired online, we could very well see (a resurgence of) exorbitant wait times at airports as summer travel gets into full swing.”
After a record 75-day partial government shutdown, the House of Representatives passed a bill Thursday afternoon that largely funds DHS through September, and President Donald Trump quickly signed it into law. The surprise vote came after warnings that temporary funding for government agencies was running dry.
Although it did not include funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), whose controversial enforcement actions led to the lapse of funding, the bill otherwise ended the longest government shutdown in history. The closure was the third in less than a year, and hours-long lines formed at airports across the country as many TSA employees quit or called in sick after working six weeks without pay.
After President Trump signed an emergency order to temporarily fund the TSA in late March, airport security lines returned to near normalcy, but there were warnings that the funding was running dry and fears of new disruptions to summer travel.
The budget passed this week guarantees TSA payments through September, but it’s unclear how the loss of more than 1,000 employees will affect the agency when summer and World Cup travel demand begins. The international soccer tournament will begin on June 11th, with matches being played in Canada, Mexico, and 11 cities across the United States.
Everett Kelly, president of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), which represents TSA employees and tens of thousands of government workers, applauded the action but said it was “unacceptable that it took this long to act.” “Time and again, we have seen members of Congress use the lives of patriotic federal workers as leverage for political gain. Federal workers are not political pawns. They deserve to be treated with dignity and respect,” he said in a statement.
Kelly called on Congress to pass the Shutdown Fairness Act, which would pay all federal employees during the government shutdown.
The travel industry is also asking Congress to exempt TSA and other essential workers from wage forfeiture during the government shutdown. In March, a six-page list of large and small travel industry associations and companies signed a letter to Congress urging them to pass several already introduced bills that would guarantee pay for air traffic controllers and TSA employees regardless of government funding.
The recent DHS shutdown caused widespread disruption to air travel across the U.S., occurring just as the spring break travel season was beginning, and created a massive security backlog. This led President Trump to send ICE agents (who were paid through a separate funding bill) to more than a dozen airports.
Mr Kirby said he believed the only solution to bring about change was a proposal to also stop councils being paid during the shutdown. Officials on both sides say such a measure is unlikely to pass. Kirby on Friday proposed moving TSA jurisdiction from DHS to the less politicized Department of Transportation to “provide clarity and restore trust.”