Airport security wait times across the country, including in Atlanta, have calmed way down since a presidential memorandum directed the Department of Homeland Security to find funds to pay employees during the ongoing partial government shutdown.
Employees, including Transportation Security Administration officers, last week began receiving back pay for their six weeks of unpaid work, and an email sent to DHS employees Monday confirms they should expect another paycheck this Friday for the pay period that ended April 4.
On Monday, Atlanta’s TSA callout rate was 14.5%, DHS said; two weeks ago that rate was more than 37%.
But the department put the status of future compensation in doubt. “At this time, do not submit timecards for pay period 7 until further guidance is provided,” the email stated.
“Now it’s up to Congress,” George Borek, an American Federation of Government Employees union steward representing Atlanta-area TSA employees, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
“Officers have come back (to work) because they’ve seen light at the end of the tunnel,” he said.
But he’s worried what the risk of another missed paycheck might cause.
“If people are seeing this again, we’re going through this again … you might have people just say that’s the straw that broke the camel’s back.”
DHS hasn’t been fully funded since mid-February because of a partisan dispute over immigration enforcement. At 52 days it is the longest government shutdown in U.S. history.
The Senate last week sent a bill to the House that would fund the entire department except for two agencies tied to immigration enforcement.
House Republican leadership had previously rejected this proposal, and the chamber is not due back in Washington until April 14, when the two-week recess ends.
The business community and airline industry, meanwhile, are continuing to advocate for a long-term legislative solution that protects TSA from any future government funding lapses.
Credit: Ben Hendren
Credit: Ben Hendren
The presidential memorandum is “clearly a stopgap, not a solution,” Metro Atlanta Chamber President and CEO Katie Kirkpatrick wrote in an op-ed last week.
“In total, the U.S. federal government has been under a partial or full shutdown for nearly 100 days since October. That is not a streak of bad luck. That is a pattern, and in the business world, patterns have consequences,” she wrote.
Kirkpatrick is urging Congress to pass legislation that “permanently protects TSA workers from losing their paychecks during government shutdowns.”
This echoes similar calls from industry association Airlines for America, which has advocated for new laws to permanently protect TSA and air traffic control from federal funding lapses.
If Congress approves funding next week, Borek noted, TSA would likely avoid the worst of callouts because they could feasibly send out paychecks on schedule.
“We remain hopeful that Congress will fund the Department and allow us to reopen soon and get everyone back to work,” the internal DHS email stated.
In a statement to the AJC, a DHS spokesperson said, “Democrats continue to use American travelers and TSA officers as pawns” and failed to end the shutdown.
“Thanks to President Trump’s March 28th order to ensure TSA officers are paid, callouts have dropped more than 43%.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
— Staff writer Tia Mitchell contributed to this article.
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