TSA management practices and misconduct hearing on CSPAN
 

Anyone see the hearings today on TSA? Some interesting facts:
104 quit a week
Last year over 4000 quit and only 300 some were hired.
The agency ranks 7th from the bottom for best places to work.

The only surprising stat from that list is that the TSA is actually the 7th worse. I would have thought it would it be dead last.

Full list here: http://bestplacestowork.org/BPTW/rankings/overall/sub

The seven federal agencies worse than TSA (from worst to least-worst):

• Intelligence & Analysis (DHS)
• U.S. Secret Service (DHS)
• Immigration and Customs Enforcement (DHS)
• Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (HHS)
• Undersecretary for Science & Technology (DHS)
• Economic Development Administration (Commerce)
• Customs & Border Protection (DHS)

So 6 out of the bottom 8 are DHS. Hmm.

(And TSA is actually the 8th from the bottom, but then math was never their strong point.)

[Insert your own joke about "DHS Intelligence" here.] ETA: Nevermind, it's over here in this thread.

Look at the bright side, TSA is better than the previous year.:o

Do you by any chance know if that 4000 figure includes people who retired?

There's a disconnect with the numbers. If 100 quit a week, then over the course of a year 5200 are quitting. Maybe that 5200 includes 1200 retirees which would bring down the number quitting to 4000.

However, what I find strange is the number hired last year of only 300. Neffenger claims his "training academy" is taking in 192 new recruits a week, for the two week program. Over 4 weeks, one month, that would mean approximately 380 new screeners are being rolled out.

And they only hired 300 over all of last year?

As I said, there's a big disconnect here.

I question the 192 new hires per week. That number just doesn't jive with the number of vacancies announced on USAJOBS.GOV.

Doesn't that assume that TSA wants to replace every screener that quits or retires?

TSA put all its eggs in Precheck ... and when that failed TSA put its eggs in Managed Inclusion II ... that failed ... TSA could entice people with Precheck by giving it away.

So now, TSA operates Managed Inclusion I.

These programs, Precheck and Managed Inclusion, were developed under a regime that placed throughput over security.

I can't find the link now. I was reading about the retention problem - it's been going on for years and there's no sign it's getting bettter. In fact, with the economy improving, it seems to be getting worse.

A couple factors cited: TSA started making more and more employees part-time. At my company, there's a certain amount of overhead just for hiring and having an employee on the payroll. It is much cheaper for the company to have one full-time employee than 2 part-time employees. Many of these part-time employees were given crazy shifts that very few people are willing to work for any length of time: split shifts, mid-day half-shifts, etc. Perhaps TSA thought shifting people to part-time would result in a savings; I think the opposite has happened.

They also deliberately implemented things like BDOs and greatly expanded the ratio of non-working LTSOs/STSOs to working TSO's specifically to create a higher pay level in an attempt to retain employees. Unfortunately, that meant that good people and management pets got promoted to jobs where they no longer actually checked bags or worked checkpoints, thus putting even more pressure on TSOs to pick up the slack.

If you needed 10 TSOs to work a checkpoint and you promoted 5 of them to STSO, LTSO and BDO, you only have 5 people left who are actually processing pax and bags at the checkpoint.

In my organization, in crisis/overload times, even third level managers roll up their sleeves and get in the trenches with the peons to get the work out. TSA doesn't operate that way. We would see significant improvements immediately if all LTSOs, STSOs and BDOs were immediately told to keep their fat paychecks but go back to actually performing a function at the checkpoint or baggage search.

Of course, now we're in this bizarre situation where Neffy's trying to convince Congress that all we have to do is make the lines even worse until another 15 million people sign up for Pre. Meanwhile, potential purchasers see closed Pre lanes, or Pre reduced to nothing more than being allowed to keep one's shoes on in the regular lane.

Here is a link to the recording of the hearing:

From the link above:

I'd like to see the exact numbers: what percent were working TSOs and what percent were non-working LTSOs, STSOs and BDOs four years ago and now.

A couple more gems from the hearings:

Rep. Cummings covering for government as always.

I think it's pretty obvious that we can vent here and on other forums, but nothing is going to change with TSA. It's too big to stop and the culture is too ingrained and there are too many people making a lot of money off the way things are now.

The point of the dogs is not to pre-clear pax for expedited screening, thus reducing congestion and the security threat it presents. It's solely to prevent another Brussels - and another job to promote TSOs to, where they get a pay rise but also reduce the working checkpoint staff by a headcount.

Another Brussels cannot be prevented when TSA security lines are two + hours long. An attack against the land side of any airport will likely have some success unless you have an armed forced in place, ready to fire and in doing that you almost guarantee that some innocent person(s) will be mistaken for a terrorist and be fired upon at some point.

We can harden airports and other transportation centers that eventually we will be under complete government control bringing use to a slow crawl and then a terrorist will just shift focus to the next target.

There is risk in everything we do and I do not believe that we can remove all risk from out lives. There comes a point when increasing security steps and trying to lower risk become too much and I think we are very near that point today where TSA is concerned.

What is the real risk of a terrorist attack against commercial aviation in comparison to the risk one faces by driving a personal vehicle to the airport? Would anyone be willing to put in place extensive safeguards that would reduce that risk for their personal vehicles?

Reasonable security steps can and should be taken but at some point those steps become burdensome and unnecessary. I think the Whole body Imagers, shoes, belts, and LGA restrictions are examples of security steps that are just not necessary.