Saw something new at MKE today - TSA Intern. She was a student working there during the summer. Her job was to be the "loader" and BP checker for th SSSS.

Not sure how I feel about this.

Which terminal? I'll be there tomorrow and will keep an eye out.

I know one thing for sure: Spiff won't be hiring her.

She was working Terminal C ( AA, UA, DL)

Interesting. I've never heard of a TSA intern. I know Private contractors and airline employees are allowed to load and run bins, but this one is new to me. I wonder what other airports are doing this. PHL isn't.

Most government agencies have an intern/co-op/summer hire program. Congress encourages this, as a matter of fact, to the point that they will often earmark funding specifically for this purpose. The advantage to a student is that they get a head start on a civil service career, because the time spent on the job counts for logevity and retirement benefits. Only agencies that don't require clearances will hire co-ops or summer hires because it takes so long to get someone cleared. A summer hire is ideal for the TSA because screeners don't require clearances.

I may have garbled the definitions, but here is what I recall they are:

Intern: A full-time government employee hired out of college into an entry-level position. These are usually at the GS-7 or (in rare cases) GS-9. There is a probationary period because they don't yet have the on-paper experience to qualify for the job.
Co-op: This is the same thing as a co-op in the private sector. These people work part-time at a government agency while attending a university. There is a maximum number of hours they can work and they must remain enrolled and carry a minimum GPA.
Summer Hire: Again, identical to the private sector -- a person >18 who works full time for a period of a few months during school break. Even though they are full time, they receive limited benefits, but I believe their time fully counts towards logevity and retirement.

In reading the post, I suspect the individual was a summer hire. The benefits to the agency (TSA in this case) are that the person doesn't count against their personnel strength ceiling; and, generally the funds don't come out of the agency's operating budget.

Incorrect. Interns and co-ops regularly get (interim) clearances. This is one of the big advantages of co-op'ing - you get your clearance put in and processed while still in school. When you get out, that's just so many more doors open to you.

jon

Very true. The first office I was in always called the summer interns "the kids" as they were usually fairly young.

The co-op's had it great as they had their clearance, often had a job out of school, and while they were in school, it counted as federal service. So with 3 years of school, they were already getting 6 hours of vacation a pay before they even started.

The agency I worked for even had a program that they were paid while in school. Don't know if they accrued vacation time or not. Then they just came to work during the summer.

I was hired into one of these programs and many of us were hired in as a GS-11. I was. On top of that, due to our degrees (CS or engineering), we often qualified for premium pay scales above the GS scale. I was on the engineering and networking pay scale and it paid about 10k more per year than a regular GS-11 with locality.

Some were even promoted to 12's during the "internship."

I was thinking about the places I worked that required TS/SCI. We did have a couple of co-ops have interim secrets in a DoD agency I worked in. Interim secrets, as you probably know, can be granted in a few days or so.

I've also seen co/ops summer hires with TS//SCI.

You're right, now that I think about it. One entity whose name ends in "Agency" would do this by changing their own rules. They would take a summer hire, do a limited background check, put them on the almighty box, and declare victory. To do the background investigation and vetting correctly would take more time than the co-op or summer hire would actually be working.

Well, when they make the rules, they can change them.

Thing is, that clearance still carries over if they want to come work full time down the road. As far as I know, it's still a full clearance with no strings attached.

Even our interns at my current company got the full clearance, but I know they did the full background check. Maybe because they worked for us 2-3 days a week that the company paid for it. 2 of them were hired full time recently.

Don't know if the TSA has this in mind but...

My office is now hiring new employees as "interns" so as to be able to extend the probationary period to 2 years and reduce the "intern's" civil service protections during said period.

There is a problem though because there is some sort of rule against 2 year GS-11 (where most of us start) "interns"

It's a pretty sleazy way around the 1 year probationary period.

The term "intern" is completely ruined for me. I can't hear it without thinking about cigars.