With millions of Americans traveling for spring break vacations in the coming weeks, Transportation Security Administration workers at O’Hare and Midway airports have gone without full paychecks for the last month as the latest partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security lags on.
Agents haven’t been paid since February, according to Darrell English, the president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 777, which represents TSA workers at O’Hare and Midway airports and airports in Wisconsin.
“Currently, they’re sleeping in their car because they can’t get back and forth to work, and washing up inside of fitness centers,” English said. With rent and mortgage payments due at the beginning of April next week, financial pressures are mounting for workers. “It’s very devastating for them,” he said.
For those wanting to help, it’s not as simple as going to the airport and giving cash or gift cards directly to the officers.
TSA agents are prohibited from accepting money or gifts because they could be interpreted as bribes. The rule helps ensure that all airport security decisions are made fairly and based strictly on safety, not personal benefit.
“TSA officers are prohibited from accepting gifts at screening locations,” a spokesperson for DHS said via email Monday afternoon. “Even during a shutdown, cash or cash equivalents cannot be accepted on behalf of the agency.”
Instead, donations need to come through an approved channel and across the country, nonprofits are stepping in to help and coordinating closely with airports and local TSA offices.
In Chicago, English says concerned travelers can mail grocery store or gas station gift cards valued at $20 or less each to American Federation of Government Employees at PO Box 389277, Chicago, IL 60638. Rules prohibit federal employees from soliciting or accepting gifts or items of monetary value greater than $20 if the gift is related to their government position.
English stressed that TSA workers can’t accept gifts at security checkpoints.
Internally, English said Local 777 is providing lunch on the job and coordinating with nonprofits, food banks and the city to assist workers, but only so much can be done before the shutdown ends. Now that dozens of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers are stationed at airports including O’Hare, morale is even lower for TSA workers, he said.
“Officers are concerned that this is a way of them moving them out of their positions at TSA, where they can take over that function, so it’s really adding more tension … especially when they haven’t been trained in depth as much as TSA has,” English said.
TSA workers have spent nearly half of the past 170 days with their earnings suspended — 43 days last fall during the longest government shutdown on record, four days earlier this year during a brief lapse in funding, and now 35 days and counting during the current shutdown, which only affects Homeland Security. Airport screeners have to keep working because they are the federal employees whose duties are deemed essential.
ICE officers go to TSA checkpoints at Trump’s direction, while long wait times at airports persist
The starting pay for TSA agents is about $34,500, and the average salary is $46,000 to $55,000, according to the agency’s careers website.
At least 376 have quit their jobs altogether since the shutdown began on Valentine’s Day, according to DHS, exacerbating staff turnover at an agency that historically has had some of the U.S. government’s highest attrition and lowest employee morale. The public is experiencing the consequences in long wait times at some airports as more TSA officers take time off to earn money on the side or cut back on expenses, though security lines at O’Hare and Midway remain at a normal pace.
“It’s hard to find individuals like that (who are) going to sacrifice their own livelihood and their family to make sure the flying public is taken care of,” English said, “and have to miss meals and possibly lose their homes because of that.”
The Associated Press contributed.
