TSA Employ’s 67,000!

By Charles Tolleson
Nov 29 2010

The airlines used to do the security screening with minimum wage employees and high turnover, according to this 2000 report by the GAO.

After 9/11 there was a demand for the government to do the screening, which the airlines were glad to turn over to the government. The airlines had been following government requirements for screening. The airlines did not want the responsibility and liability. Liability insurance premiums would have been expensive. It's much easier to sue an airline than the federal government. Instead the airlines turned the expense, liability, and responsibility over to the government, where the passengers pay a ‘minimum’ of $2.50 and a maximum of $5.00 per boarding, up to $10 round trip, for security expenses.

"Did you know that the nation's airports are not required to have Transportation Security Administration screeners checking passengers at security checkpoints? The 2001 law creating the TSA gave airports the right to opt out of the TSA program in favor of private screeners after a two-year period."

The airlines should be responsible for screening passengers. The airlines can search you in order for you to use their property. The government should not search you in order for you to use someone’s property. Should the government be allowed to search potential customers of a shopping mall? No, but the mall owners have a right to search you before you go on their property. The airlines would have to become efficient at security to satisfy their customers or go out of business. Different security procedures would be used by different airlines if the government would get out of the way. As it stands now the government prohibits profiling. Without this government prohibition some airlines might be very safe and profitable by profiling, and paying a hefty insurance premium in case a terrorist sets off a bomb on board an aircraft. Here is a good article about Privatizing Air Security, by Robert Murphy.

Prior to 9/11 the government policy was for passengers to submit and cooperate with any highjacker. This contributed to the destruction of the World Trade Center and the loss of lives on 9/11. Now the passengers are not submitting to a highjacker, or any strange behavior of another passenger on an airliner. The passengers are acting as local security, something centralized planners are incapable of.

In 1999 there were about 8,000 private airport screeners. Today the TSA employees over eight times that many, 67,000! From 1999 through 2009 there was about a 19% increase in domestic enplanements. The TSA employees are thinking of forming a union. Once that happens the number of TSA government employees will increase dramatically.

"Pre-board screeners earn an average of $6 an hour nationally, often less than the starting wage in airport fast food restaurants. In 1999, according to the General Accounting Office, annual turnover among the nation’s 8,000 airport screeners exceeded 125 percent. At this rate, the average screener has been on the job for four and one-half months. At Boston’s Logan Airport, where two of the hijacked planes departed, the turnover rate was 200 percent; at Atlanta’s Hartsfield, it exceeded 400 percent."

One would think the low pay and private screeners caused 9/11. But, after the government took over security screening fake test bombs still got through. On October 22, 2007, Thomas Frank's USA Today article headlined, "Most fake bombs missed by screeners," saying: "Security screeners at two of the nation's busiest airports failed to find fake bombs hidden on undercover agents posing as passengers in more than 60% of tests last year, according to a classified report obtained by USA TODAY."

The Airline Pilots Security Alliance had this to say in a report, The Truth about Airline Security, "two recent classified TSA reports leaked to the public, confirm TSA screeners at multiple airports, failed to detect more than 90 percent of hidden weapons concealed by testers."