Absences fall sharply after US airport security workers finally get paid

By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON, March 31 (Reuters) – The Transportation Security Administration said absences among the nation’s 50,000 security officers fell sharply on Monday as workers were paid after working six weeks without a paycheck, and major airports that had suffered multi-hour lines said operations had largely returned to normal.

The Homeland Security Department said the absence rate fell to 8.6% after rising as high as 12.4% on Friday. The greatest number of absences reported Monday was in Atlanta, with 29% of workers out, along with around 20% at Houston’s two airports, Baltimore, New Orleans, New York’s John F. Kennedy, and Philadelphia.

The weeks-long standoff in Congress caused chaos and security lines that in some cases topped four hours, longest in the TSA’s nearly 25-year history.

Hundreds of U.S. immigration agents and Homeland Security Investigations officers began deploying at 14 U.S. ​airports last week to aid security screening. The White House has said they would remain in place until operations returned to normal.

President Donald Trump signed a memorandum on Friday that ordered TSA workers to be paid, even though Congress has still not ended the 46-day-old partial government shutdown. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said workers started receiving pay Monday.

DHS said most TSA officers on Monday received a retroactive paycheck that included at least two full two-week paychecks, and it plans to provide workers with the remainder of a partial missed paycheck from the beginning of the shutdown as soon as possible.

More than 500 airport security officers have quit since mid-February, and tens of thousands of other DHS workers are still not being paid.

Airports are grappling with a school spring break travel surge, with volume about 5% higher than last year.

Democrats in Congress held up funding ​for DHS while demanding changes in rules ⁠governing its immigration operations after agents in Minneapolis shot and killed U.S. citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

After weeks of rancor, the Senate passed a bipartisan compromise bill to end the six-week deadlock that would have paid TSA workers. But Republican leaders in the U.S. House ​on Friday rejected that legislation, instead passing a bill to fund all of DHS.

(Reporting by David Shepardson)