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Massive calls could inevitably mean that air travel is less secure, especially since the stoppage is in its second week and there is no clear end to the political stalemate in sight.
"This will certainly affect the traveling public we have vowed to protect," CNN Hydrick Thomas, president of the TSA's National Employees Union, told CNN.
At John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, 170 employees of the TSA called each day this week, Thomas told CNN. The morning officers had to work overtime to fill the gaps.
The Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport experienced a 200% to 300% increase in incoming calls, where 25 to 30 TSA employees are usually called, according to a local official familiar with the situation.
Union officials point out that absences are not part of organized action, but believe that the number of people calling is likely to increase.
"This call problem will really explode in the next week or two when employees miss their first paycheck, "a union official at the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport told CNN. "TSA officers tell the union that they will find another way to make money, which means calling other jobs."
North Carolina airports, including Charlotte and Raleigh-Durham, experienced a 10% increase in TSA calls, according to the newspaper. Mac Johnson, the president of the local. "That number will get worse as it hangs around."
Outgoing calls "create vulnerability" and screening officers "do more with less," Johnson said.
Two of the sources, who are federal officials, described sick leave as a protest against the delay in pay. One of them called the "blue flu", a reference to blue shirts worn by transport safety officers who screen passengers and baggage at airport security checkpoints. .
A union official, however, said that while some employees were dissatisfied with pay, agents said they were calling patients for more practical reasons. Single parents can no longer afford childcare expenses or find paid jobs outside the government to pay their rent and other bills, for example.
About one quarter of the government, including the TSA and the Department of Homeland Security, have been without funding since December 22. About 55,000 TSA employees, who control about 800 million passengers a year, are considered essential and are among the expected 420,000 federal public servants. continue to work without pay.
The TSA did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but it previously indicated that the agents would eventually be compensated.
"We have never had a situation where the agents have not been paid," David Pekoske, a TSA administrator, told the press. demonstrating security procedures at an airport in the Washington area a few days before the start of the closure. He added that the recent judgments "have a duration such that it does not delay the payment of wages".
President Donald Trump and congressional leaders met Friday at the White House and are not close to resolving the stalemate. A decision could last months or even years, said President Trump, quoted by the leader of the Senate minority, Chuck Schumer.
How TSA Could Solve the Problem
The number of passengers on the move has increased by about 4% each in recent years, Pekoske said in September. He said that growth "without a proportional increase in the size of our transport security staff … has had an impact on both training and morale."
And the TSA is preparing for more calls next week, according to officials in the field. This means that TSA officials in the country's airports, knowing that long lines of security are hindering passengers, could have difficult decisions to make, including deciding to let passengers board their flights with less control.
The big question is "How do they fill the void?" said one of the veterans of the TSA, worrying about the impact on safety. "If waiting times at airports are not long, they do not do anything on the security side."
According to these officials, airports could possibly use fewer random security checks on passengers, or give passengers who have not yet been checked for the PreCheck program an accelerated filtering. Airports struggling to staff personnel checkpoints may also begin to reduce the number of lanes open to passengers, which will likely result in longer lines and waiting times.
Airports with manpower problems may also choose to relax the standards for checked baggage based on the theory that people would not bring bombs on their own flight, because the explosion would also kill them. Known as a positive baggage match, this assumes that if a passenger registers and gets on the flight, his checked baggage is safe, but some security experts doubt that this is effective.
There is no indication that any of these measures were necessary or implemented.
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