TSA workers demand to be paid as partial government shutdown drags on – Spectrum News

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WASHINGTON — On the 39^th day of a partial Department of Homeland Security shutdown, a union representing Transportation Security Administration officers is demanding they be paid. About 47,000 TSA agents are considered essential and must continue screening passengers, baggage and cargo for deferred pay as lawmakers debate immigration enforcement reforms and funding for the agency. 
“Right now, these workers need a vote, a signature and a paycheck,” American Federation of Government Employees President Everett Kelley said at an online news conference where he was joined by several TSA agents who have been working without their salaries since Feb. 14. “End the shenanigans today. Finish the deal.”
Senators on Tuesday were scrambling to clinch an emerging proposal to end the shutdown by funding much of the Homeland Security Department, including TSA airport workers, but excluding ICE operations that are at the core of the dispute.
“We’re ready to move, and it’s really going to be incumbent upon [Democrats],” Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., told reporters at the Capitol Tuesday afternoon. “If DHS is going to open up and we’re going to have TSA agents paid again before the weekend, the ball is in the Democrats’ court.”
Democrats are refusing to fund the whole department without restraints on Trump’s immigration and deportation agenda after agents killed two citizens in Minneapolis in January.
A potential breakthrough in negotiations came late Monday, after a group of Republican senators met with Trump at the White House. Under the proposal, ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations would be funded as well as Customs and Border Protection. But that would come with guardrails — keeping officers from those divisions in their traditional roles, rather than deploying them in urban immigration roundups.
Trump is reportedly on board with the Republican effort to fund DHS without providing money for ICE’s enforcement and removal efforts.The proposal involves a reconciliation bill for ICE funding and portions of the SAVE America Act requiring voter ID, so it can pass without needing Democrats’ votes.
“Trump threw a temper tantrum yesterday and demanded Republicans’ voter suppression bill be part of any deal to pay TSA workers,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., wrote on X Tuesday. “This was an outrageous demand from the start and it wasted a day of negotiations.”
The pressure is on Senate lawmakers as U.S. airports are snarled by long security lines, with travelers being told to arrive hours before their flights in Houston, Atlanta and Baltimore Washington International. Almost 11% of TSA workers missed work on Monday, and at least 458 have quit since the shutdown began, the DHS reported Tuesday.
“Morale is low. Stress is high. The uncertainty is taking a toll not just financially but mentally and emotionally,” AFGE Local 0333 president LaShanda Palmer said at the union’s news conference Tuesday. She said many TSA agents are having to choose between paying for gas and food or going to work.
“We are asking for one simple thing: Respect our work force, show some compassion and resolve this shutdown so the people who keep this country running are no longer forced to work without pay.”
Several TSA workers who are continuing to show up for work reported taking second jobs, donating plasma, acquiring loans and fearing missed home, auto and health insurance payments.
“It’s not that these employees and their families are hungry,” AFGE second vice president for Council 100 Mac Johnson said at his union’s news conference. “They’re beginning to literally starve because they do not have the financial means to provide food for their families.”
The Associated Press contributed to this reporting.

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