The latest in long-standing problems with the perennially-beleaguered Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is that low morale may have gotten to where it is compromising security, says a new government report.
The 29-page report by Homeland Security Department Inspector General Richard Skinner says the situation is leading to screeners quitting their jobs.
It’s only the latest study citing personnel problems among the nation’s 48,000 airport screeners. The workforce has some of the highest turnover and injury rates in the federal government.
Unlike past workplace reports, however, this one says security could suffer as a result.
“Given their frustration, employees may be distracted and less focused on their security and screening responsibilities,” the report said.
Casual airline passengers may have noticed as screeners are often found in groups talking and chatting while others are studiously searching elderly people in wheel chairs and carefully examining young mothers with feeding bottles.
Transportation Security Administration chief Kip Hawley criticized the report, saying it relies on disgruntled screeners at a few airports. “This results in flawed conclusions,” Hawley wrote in a rebuttal.
The report, however, charges the agency with “not successfully addressing … longstanding workplace issues.”
Among them are screeners’ concerns that they feared retaliation for raising complaints and were discouraged by managers from meeting with an ombudsman.
TSA efforts to address problems were called inadequate.
The agency’s programs that it set up to deal with personnel issues “may provide false hope and have the unanticipated effects of heightening employee dissatisfaction,” the report says.
Report by David Wilkening
