DHS Takes Emergency Action To Pay 50,000 US Airport Workers Unpaid Since Mid-February

(MENAFN- Live Mint) The Department of Homeland Security (DHS ) said on Friday that it was taking emergency action to ensure pay for about 50,000 airport security officers who have gone unpaid since mid-February.

The move comes after work absences triggered disruptions at airports across the United States, leading to chaotic scenes and long security lines at screening checkpoints, news agency Reuters reported.

"(The Transportation Security Administration) has immediately begun the process of paying its workforce. TSA officers should begin seeing paychecks as early as Monday," DHS was quoted as saying by the agency.

Staff absence cause disturbances

President Donald Trump said on Thursday he would take executive action to pay the TSA workers and issued a memo directing the payments to be fulfilled on Friday, Reuters said in the report.

The TSA said earlier on Friday that nearly 12% of airport security officers did not show up for work on Thursday, accounting for the most absences since mid-February.

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Severe disruptions were reported across a number of major airports on Thursday, with security lines stretching for several hours or more, and similar scenes were witnessed again on Friday.

The Transportation Security Administration said more than 3,450 officers failed to report for duty on Thursday, including more than one-third of officers at New York's JFK and at airports in Baltimore, Houston and Atlanta.

The TSA cited reports of lines of four hours or more at airports across the country, the worst lines in the agency's nearly 25-year history.

Situation can worsen, said officials

Airline officials also warned that staff absences and security lines could worsen this weekend if there were no concrete details on how TSA officers would be paid. Nearly 500 airport security officers have quit since February.

According to Reuters, it remains unclear how long the funding will last or whether President Trump would tap funding for the Homeland Security Department that was approved last year as part of a massive tax and spending bill.

Why is DHS funding held up?

The funding crunch comes as Democrats in Congress have held up funding for DHS while demanding a change in rules governing its immigration operations, after agents in Minneapolis fatally shot US citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

Republican leaders in the US House of Representatives on Friday rejected a bipartisan Senate compromise to end the six-week deadlock over DHS funding, the agency reported.

Meanwhile, Congressional Democrats had proposed funding TSA separately while negotiating over reforms on how Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents operate.

Smaller airports could be forced to shut

As a result of the disruptions, the TSA had reiterated on Wednesday that the agency could be forced to shut down smaller airports, especially if the staffing issues worsened further.

Airports are grappling with a surge in travel during the school spring-break season, with passenger volumes running about 5% higher than last year. The spike in demand has added pressure on the already strained security operations.

To help ease the situation, hundreds of US immigration agents and Homeland Security Investigations officers began deploying at 14 US airports across the country on Monday to assist with security screening.

(with agency inputs)

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