|
Morale Crisis at TSA Underscores NTEU Call for Collective
Bargaining
The only way to deal with the massive morale crisis among employees at
the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), made clear in a recent
survey
of TSA workers, is to grant them collective bargaining rights, NTEU President
Colleen M. Kelley said.
|
In a letter
to TSA Administrator Kip Hawley, President Kelley called for a prompt meeting
to discuss this crisis impacting the nation’s security. “I assume
you are as troubled as I am by the results” of the survey, she wrote.
“I look forward to an opportunity to discuss these matters with you
in more depth.”
Clearly, President Kelley said, the internal survey of its employees by
the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reveals the deep flaws in TSA’s
current approach to managing its workforce. For example, she noted that
fewer than half the respondents, 48.5 percent, responded positively to the
question of whether “physical conditions allow employees to perform
their jobs well.”
Kelley said NTEU members have told the union about such appalling workplace
conditions as the lack of clean bathrooms, lack of available water for drinking,
lack of adequate space for break rooms and the lack of parking at airports.
“These quality of life factors contribute in a significant way to
how an employee views his or her job,” she wrote.
“The only way we can have the kind of engaged, professional workforce”
the nation’s security demands “is to allow Transportation Security
Officers to have collective bargaining rights,” the NTEU leader wrote.
With such rights, she added, “employees become partners in the mission
in a way that empowers them” and they obtain “a stake in the
success of transportation security.”
Kelley noted pointedly in her letter to Hawley that “it is within
your power” to grant employees collective bargaining rights; the statute
establishing TSA left that determination up to the agency head.
Other TSA employee survey responses underscore NTEU’s continuing opposition
to the agency’s Performance and Accountability Standards System (PASS),
a system used not only to determine whether an employee can retain her or
his job, but which plays a key role in merit pay and promotion decisions
and opportunities.
Only 20.9 percent of respondents said they believe promotions are based
on merit; less than one-quarter, 24.5 percent, believe that differences
in performance are recognized in a meaningful way; and just 23.6 percent
believe pay raises depend on how well employees perform their jobs.
“Mr. Secretary,” President Kelley wrote, “these statistics
are abysmal. This system is broken, and it appears there are no parts of
PASS even worth keeping.” TSA recently has made some modest changes
in PASS, which NTEU has said do not go nearly far enough.
|