Failure Rates As High As 80 Percent At Some Airports
TSA wants private
pilots to be "badged" in order to have access to their personal
planes at many airports, and different badge for each airport to
boot, and yet when it comes to testing their own employees ... well
you'll just have to read on. The American Federation of Government
Employees Tuesday called on TSA to take immediate action after
hearing from myriad members at the Transportation Security
Administration about unusually high failure rates on the Practical
Skills Evaluations portion of the agency's Performance
Accountability and Standards System.
In a letter to TSA acting Administrator Gale Rossides, AFGE
urged TSA to suspend the PSE until the tests have been reviewed.
AFGE also asked that TSA provide failure rates by airport, that TSA
reinstate all TSOs who have been removed because of the failures,
and that the failures be cleared from records so that PASS scores
and pay are not affected. AFGE has been the only union to represent
TSA employees since the agency's inception and with more than
11,000 members in 32 Locals across the country, is widely
recognized as the TSA union.
"The PSE failure rate nationwide is alarming-more than 50
percent on the first test and as high as 80 percent at some
airports," AFGE National President John Gage said. "We believe this
high failure rate on the first test can be attributed to the change
in procedures implemented by TSA last year. On March 31, 2008, the
Office of Performance Management and Improvement issued an email
that stated 'PSEs remain in place for PASS 2008. . . [f]or PASS
2009, PSEs will be conducted by regional teams of high performing
Security Officers.'"
"In contrast to past
years, TSOs never received extra refresher training before the
administration of the PSE test," Gage said. "They did not receive
the additional training because the individuals who normally
provided the refresher training were receiving training from
Lockheed-Martin about administrating the PSEs. It appears as though
the officers who were selected to administrator the test received
limited training."
In addition to its letter to TSA, AFGE is sending a letter to
House Homeland Security Chairman Bennie Thompson to call for an
investigation into whether the PSE tests are administered properly,
whether the same standards are applied across the country and
whether TSOs and testers are trained properly.
"We agree and understand that TSOs must be capable of performing
their job duties and TSA has implemented a testing program to
ascertain their abilities; however, implementing a testing program
that 1) fails to effectively evaluate the TSOs ability to perform
their job duties, 2) provides inadequate training for the test
administrators and test takers, 3) penalizes TSOs by limiting their
ability to obtain a raise or bonus, and 4) results in the removal
of long-term employees is a disgrace to TSA and the Department of
Homeland Security," Gage added.