TSA workers begin getting paid after Trump order, official says
Transportation Security Administration workers who have gone without pay for work during a partial government shutdown are starting to see paychecks on Monday, March 30.
"Most TSA employees received a retroactive paycheck today that included at least two full paychecks covering pay periods 4 and 5 today," Department of Homeland Security Acting Assistant of Secretary of Public Affairs Lauren Bis told USA TODAY. "A small population might see a slight delay due to a variety of reasons, including financial institution processing times or issues with their direct deposit. We are working aggressively with USDA’s National Finance Center to complete processing for the half paycheck they are owed from pay period 3 as soon as possible."
Bis expressed gratitude to President Donald Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin for getting TSA officers paid, a sentiment echoed by the union representing more than 45,000 TSA officers.
"AFGE TSA members are grateful to receive some backpay today. But many of our members have seen bills pile up, interest and late fees add up, cars repossessed, and families thrown into disarray because Congress has failed to do their jobs," Hydrick Thomas, president of the American Federation of Government Employees TSA Council 100, said in a statement. "Backpay alone does not fix those problems. And our fellow DHS employees are still not being paid thanks to the dysfunction in Congress."
AFGE is calling on Congress to end their previously scheduled recess to get DHS fully funded.
"To leave Washington while tens of thousands of workers are going without pay shows a clear lack of respect for the essential employees tasked with keeping our nation safe," Thomas said.
How many TSA workers quit?
More than 500 TSA officers have quit since the start of this shutdown, the third this fiscal year, according to DHS and AFGE.
Thousands more have called out throughout the shutdown, leading to sometimes hours-long airport security waits.
Bis said Sunday March 29, saw 10.59% (3,101) of TSA workers call out of work nationwide. The highest rate of callouts occurred days prior on March 27, when 12.35% of workers did not report for duty, she said.
Some workers reported receiving pay on Monday morning, though not without complications. Airports around the country also reportedly began returning to some semblance of normalcy.
DHS has been partially unfunded since funding ran out on Feb. 13, when Senate Democrats and Republicans reached an impasse over immigration enforcement.
Why weren't TSA workers getting paid?
Funding for DHS, which oversees TSA, ran out on Feb. 13, meaning thousands of TSA personnel have worked without pay for more than six weeks. As a result, many began calling in sick or quitting entirely.
The consequent disruptions ground some airports to a near-halt, while others contended with security lines that snaked out into parking lots and lasted upward of four hours.
Several proposals to fund TSA and address large-scale disruptions at airports have failed to pass, as Democrats continue to press for major reforms to Immigration and Customs Enforcement after the fatal shootings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minnesota in January, and Republicans vote against bills that don't concede to voter ID changes and other demands.
The administration deployed ICEofficers to major airports to assist with the backups, though some TSA workers reported that the agents were instead causing more confusion.
Legislation was still stalled on March 27, ahead of a scheduled two-week recess for Congress. In response, Trump signed an order redirecting federal funds already earmarked for DHS to pay TSA workers. However, it's only a temporary fix, and long-term funding still needs to be approved by lawmakers, who won't return until April 14.
TSA union leader: 'They're not being fair'
Checking her account on Monday morning, Angela Grana, the Colorado-based regional vice president of the union representing TSA workers at 38 airports across the Rockies, saw that she got paid for working 200 hours as straight pay. She said the overtime and holiday hours she worked didn't appear to have been counted properly, and that it appeared she was taxed at a higher rate than usual because of the lump-sum payment.
As a union representative, Grana said she's hearing horror stories from colleagues who were out of the country or deployed on military orders and missed the last-minute order to file timesheets on March 27.
"They're not being fair about it at all," she said.
Grana said she remains skeptical that TSA workers who have quit will quickly return to work – under normal circumstances, quitting means losing your security clearance, and workers might have to go through the process again to rejoin. She said she suspects some workers who were calling in sick will return to work, but doubted the back pay payments would immediately resolve staffing problems.
"This is all back pay. That doesn't tell me I'm going to get paid in the future," she said.
Track TSA wait times
TSA has not consistently updated the MyTSA app during the partial shutdown, but travelers can check wait times for major airports with USA TODAY's TSA tracker.
This story has been updated to add new information.