End-Of-Year Performance Bonus

 Dear Administrator Pekoske: 

On behalf of AFGE TSA Council 100, I am sending this letter in response to your message to the workforce last night, December 16, 2021, which (1) doubled down on the agency’s disappointing decision to deny Transportation Security Officers (“TSOs”) their end-of-the-year performance bonus and (2) addressed some of our concerns with the eligibility criteria for the December-January Readiness Award but left other issues unresolved. With the hope that you will provide TSOs with the end-of-the-year bonus they reasonably expected and revise the eligibility criteria for this month’s Readiness Award, this letter details the specific changes we are requesting. 

I. Pay TSOs Their End-of-the-Year Performance Bonus 

It came as a shock to the screening workforce when TSA announced during last week’s Town Hall that it would not be paying TSOs an end-of-the-year performance bonus. It shocked them because they have come to expect it yearly, and it shocked them because TSA said it would pay it. Specifically, a February 25, 2020 communication from TSA (“We Heard You: TSO Pay in the President’s Budget”) discussed changes to pay policy in FY 2021 and explicitly said that, while “[t]he salary increase portion of TOPS and STSO/EPMP payouts would be replaced by TSO Service Pay[,] [t]he cash award portion (one-time bonus) would remain” (emphasis supplied). Subsequent communications concerning pay policy changes in FY 2021 gave no indication that the one-time bonus would go away. 

Transportation Security Officers planned to receive their FY 2021 end-of-the-year bonus. They budgeted with it in mind. To choose this year, of all years, to take the bonus away from TSOs—an indisputably underpaid and overworked group of essential employees serving on the frontline of the pandemic for nearly two years—is more than just wrong. It is cruel. We urge you to do the right thing and provide an end-of-the-year performance bonus for FY 2021. 

When we spoke yesterday, you said that this was not an issue of “unwillingness to pay,” but an “inability to pay.” It is hard to give that explanation any credit when, on the same day, you announced a $300 increase to the Readiness Award for eligible employees. But even so, if TSA has to wait until February to find funding, we are sure that TSOs will understand the slight delay. 

II. Further Revise the Eligibility Criteria for the December-January Readiness Award 

When consistently and equitably applied, TSA’s Readiness Award has been a great program to reward TSOs for their reliability during a difficult year. And we are grateful for your continued willingness to review and favorably revise the award’s eligibility criteria. Most recently, this included TSA’s decisions to (1) add “leave approved on a basis of COVID-19 as provided in TSA HCAM 2020.30-4, Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19)” as an exception to the criterion that the employee have no unscheduled absences for the covered period; (2) remove the arbitrary requirement that the employee have no record of corrective, disciplinary, or adverse action in the last ninety days; and (3) give Federal Security Directors (“FSDs”) the authority to pay the Readiness Award to employees who have unscheduled absences but who would otherwise be eligible for the award. 

However, there are still issues with the eligibility criteria that we encourage you to address. First, the unscheduled absence of a sick employee who follows proper call-out procedures prior to the start of their shift should not render the employee ineligible for the Readiness Award. Simply put, TSA policy should not encourage sick employees to come to work and closely interact with their coworkers and members of the traveling public. And failing to make this revision will result in exactly that. While adding leave taken under the COVID-19 HCAM to the list of exceptions and giving FSDs the authority to excuse unscheduled absences on a case-by-case basis are steps in the right direction, they are insufficient to address this concern. The FSD discretion, in particular, will inevitably result in the inconsistent payment of Readiness Awards, and TSOs will be denied their award solely because they happen to work at an airport whose FSD failed to recognize the need for this common-sense exception. Second, the requirement that the employee “[b]e in compliance with President Biden’s [vaccine mandate]” should be removed. The apparent purpose of the Readiness Award is precisely that—to reward readiness. A TSO who has decided not to be vaccinated for reasons other than medical inability or religious belief is just as ready to work in December and January as unvaccinated employees who submitted exemption requests to the vaccine mandate. The distinction is irrelevant for an award premised on attendance, and it should be removed. 

Thank you again for your continued willingness to meet with us and discuss the concerns of the bargaining unit, and we look forward to a positive response to the specific issues we have raised in this letter.