When Juan joined the Transport Security Administration, or TSA, about seven years ago, he was not sure of the time he could stay. He was appointed to employees at the checkpoint of examination and scannings at Palm Springs International Airport, an internal facility at the foot of the San Jacinto Mountains, a few hours by East Los Angeles. I believed that any position within the federal government would provide stability and living wages, but it was given only part -time hours. His salary was so low that he had to live with his parents and make a second job. Supervisors seemed keen to write him for small mistakes. He said that all this sadness “to be a shield of meat.” He was trained on the ground in Palm Springs and at the Federal Law enforcement training center in southeast Georgia, along with border patrol agents, reform officers, and FBI officers. Even there, TSA was a “ugly step agency”, Juan, who told me his real name for privacy.
Juan was a young child when TSA was created as part of the response of George W. Bush’s response to September 11. By the fall of 2002, about fifty -five thousand transport security officers, or TSOS, examined aircraft passengers for TSA who started as private sector contractors, but they were soon transferred to federal employees, and in 2003, TSA was absorbed by the Ministry of Internal Security. It is easy to hate the agency to make air travel uncomfortable. In “Hands off!” Protests against Elon Musk Dodge In support of federal workers, I had not yet discovered a sign of TSA, however, in 2023, for example, TSOS intercepted nearly seven thousand firearms, ninety -three percent was loaded. Juan believed that prevention, the lack of great news, was evidence of success. He was often thinking of Richard Reed, who tried to detonate the “shoe bomb”, a few months after September 11. Juan said that the subsequent removal and the examination of shoes prevented a person from “trying the same exactly the same.”
Even after the transfer of TSA under the Ministry of National Security, the agency’s workers had rights much lower than other federal employees. TSOS could not compromise; Their wages and benefits were closer to those in fast food or retail than the GS system, which is the main federal wage scale. Of course, this led to angry employees. “For this reason we have a bad reputation among the audience,” Juan said. In the 2004 fiscal year, the TSOS is twenty -four percent, compared to 7.5 percent in the internal security as a whole. After many attempts, the efforts made to organize a union in 2011 succeeded. Juan joined the Southern California branch at the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), local 1260, which covered about twenty -six hundred TSOS, from LaX Airport and Orange County John to San Diego. He said: “The union was optional, but my intestine told me that it was the right thing to do.”
In 2019, during the federal closure for a month, TSOS, such as air traffic control units, were forced to work without pay. Juan was still part -time, but he expanded the fact that he was living with his parents. Some of his colleagues could not bear the costs of gas or child care they needed to move. There was a shortage of employment in airports throughout the country. A TSA official warned that security operations were “negatively affected” in Palm Springs and threatened to punish the workers who summoned the patients. Then the hardship of the epidemic came: the working hours are irregular, and high rates of Corona virus disease. Juan contracting with the virus several times. In 2022, Alejandro MayorkasMinister of Internal Security for President Joe Biden and David Picosk, who was appointed by President Trump to lead TSA, and TSOS rights expanded their salaries to approach other federal employees. Juan, who was working full -time, saw his salary jumping from forty thousand dollars to nearly seventy thousand.
Last year, the TSO Federation, AFGE, signed a seven -year collective agreement that provided better rights for satisfactory leave and a simplified complaint process for fifty thousand workers. (Non -equivalent discipline, and limited options for appeal continued to influence the morale.) At almost the same time, the rights of the two parties were presented to the TSA workforce law in Congress to grant full federal protection. Juan said: “I felt that we were finally in a place we were able to, like what we already did,” said Juan. Thus, even after the Heritage Foundation Project 2025 He recommended that TSA be “privatized” and “Dunionized”, and after Trump won a second term, Juan was not worried about his job. “I was calculating that CBA was solid.”
After that, Trump entered his position and called Picosk. In February, the new leadership of TSA dictates that “transgender officers no longer perform the travelers”, given Trump’s executive order about the “biological truth” of sex. Juan told me that TSOS was also frustrated due to an unsuccessful delay in obtaining her annual allocation to the official uniform, which they need in order to comply with the “great focus on professionalism”. On the seventh of March, he was in an early shift in the morning when a workshop referred to an email and said: “Hey, what is happening with this?” The Minister of Internal Security, Christie Naim, issued a memorandum entitled “Supporting TSA by removing the union that harms security security personnel.” The memorandum canceled the union’s contract for 2024 and deprived TSOS the right to choose a representative for “collective negotiation purposes or for any other purposes.” She stated that the union had “only benefited from the American Union of Government Employees” and undermined “the critical TSA mission to protect the transportation system and preserve the safety of Americans.” Juan Steward called his federation and said: “It is better to invite Bobby” – which is related to Bobby Orrozko, the local president. “It is better to discover what is happening against hell, because we are tight.”
There were immediate changes at Palm Springs Airport. In the Labor Restaurant, the managers stripped the designated flyer board and removed the folders containing the collective assembly agreement. Water cooling in the examination area that was re -filtered is no longer. The contract allowed to decay wearing short pants instead of pants during the summer, and when the external temperature increased above seventy degrees; Short pants are now banned, even in the California desert. Juan was informed of the new attendance policy: I will be asked for any TSO who had to contact the patients, even for one day, to present the doctor’s memo. But who can get such a note within hours of waking up with influenza or back spasm? “A lot of this is designed to hunt you mainly for writing and comment,” said Juan. A note from the Ministry of Human Resources at TSA indicated that employees who face such discipline “have no right to request acting.”
The rate of membership of the federation among public sector workers has long been five times the rate of workers in the private sector. The collective freedom agreements, as well as civil rights laws in the 1960s, have believed that government workers are treated fairly and cannot be expelled without reason. “There are many people who are not very happy at the present time,” said Juan. On March 13, AFGE filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration to cancel the TSA collective assembly agreement illegally. Two weeks later, Trump canceled the federation contracts for other workers in the Ministry of Internal Security, as well as in the Ministry of Energy, the Ministry of Health and Humanitarian Services, the Ministry of Justice, and more, which paid additional lawsuits. Since he took office, Trump has sought to cancel an agreement of nearly a million federal employees, who can now be expelled as desired. (A judge temporarily prevented him from canceling the absence of a small part of these workers last week.) “Of all federal agencies, we are the most mentally equipped, because we were here before,” Uruzco, the local TSO president in 1260 in LaX. Meanwhile, Republican Senator Tommy Toblville, from Alabama and Mike Lee, from Utah, presented a “TSA” bill and use of external sources of his duties for private contractors. Juan believes that privatization will lead to poor working conditions and lack of investment in machines and maintenance. “You cannot cut the employees without sacrificing either waiting times or security effectiveness,” he said. “This is impossible.”
On the day of the last week, Juan woke up at 2:30 pm I amRight, put it on its official uniform-a short-sleeved blue shirt, his badge and shoulder panels with TSA badge, black goods pants, and black shoes. Hold the orange energy drink before moving for an hour to the airport. He should have gone to bed before sunset, but he remained awake after it was too late. The signs of the stadium and silence were abroad. The desert sand that was collected on the windshield was dispelled when it retreated from the corridor.
TSOS in Palm Springs works on overlapping transformations, between 3:30 I am And 7:30 eveningDuring the “season”. The perceive of the excessive degree in its season, which lasts from June to October, workers take a vacation or accept temporary tasks in airports in the cooler areas. It was in late April, after various tourist season tops: the PGA golf championship, tennis in Indian Wales, Kochilla. There was still a naval infantry to and from the desert training center at Twentynine Palms, Canadian retirees, ice birds, the main engine of the local economy. However, throughout the city, Canadians were selling their homes. Definitions, immigration requirements and threats to colonize their country have pushed them to leave. A spokesman for Palm Springs airport told a local news station:Palm Springs ♥ ️ Canada“Signs, with the flags of the extracted maple leaves inside the heart, along the city center sector and all over the airport.
At the checkpoint, all the seven security corridors were open. They were crowded with older couples, athletes, families holidays and scented small dogs. Juan riding through various roles during his transformation for eight hours. He gave instructions in the carrier belt, led people through a scanner of advanced technology scanner, and examined bags that pass through the X -ray machine. Juan told me: “X-rays-they are mentally attractive.” “You get a picture, and your work is knowledge, Is this a good bag or a bad bag? You don’t have a very long time to know that. ”Over the years, he saw everything from grenade shells to“ the crazy sex games that you can imagine. ”There were new rules (Bocce balls, but not bowling balls, well) and new technologies. Tomorrow, they can say,“ laptops are not allowed, the period. ”We will not know the reason. We just have to impose it.”
