Airport Screening Privatization Continues to Be a Better Option

Dec. 10, 2014
The privatization program was successfully piloted at five volunteer airports, eventually expanded to the current 18 airports that prefer an approach of business over bureaucracy.

The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) union’s National President, J. David Cox, recently told a House of Representative subcommittee his union opposes the TSA Screening Partnership Program (SPP), an initiative that allows airports to replace TSA screeners by contracting for privatized screening operators. Cox’s blatantly unsubtle scare tactic claimed private screening was poor security and put the traveling public at risk, stating that “the only group who stands to gain from privatizing airport security are security contractors themselves.”

Yes, they are for-profit businesses, but his statement is carelessly flawed. The private screeners perform precisely the same important security role as the TSA screeners, and if they are doing so at a profit, perhaps there is no heresy in suggesting that federal screening costs may be bloated. I’ll gladly renew Mr. Cox’s subscription to any major newspaper in the country, most of which regularly report on the broad range of troublesome misadventures of TSOs at the checkpoint, few of which, if any, originate at any of the current 18 airports with privatized screening. There’s a lesson in there somewhere.

Let me first stipulate that I am not a fan of unions. In my checkered career, I have been a member of three unions, all of them due to being closed shops, i.e., mandated membership in order to work there. The best I can say of them is that, like doctors: first, they did no (significant) harm. But I digress.

I will also stipulate that the ratio of problem locations may not be entirely out of whack, considering that there are roughly 450 commercial airports, so only 432 of them (96%) operated by TSA screeners are causing the problems. This is, of course, a gross mischaracterization of the situation – much like Mr. Cox’s grossly hyperbolic testimony – but my point is that there appear to be growing justifications for privatization to expand, not the least of which is TSA’s own public record of performance. I don’t mean to denigrate those TSA stations with consistently good records, and there are clearly a multitude in the 96% majority, but I do mean to challenge Cox’s denigration of the privatized airport screeners who do an equal-or-better job without dues-paying homage to AFGE’s rants.  Among other realities, he ignores the fact that Canada and most European airports use private screening and rarely generate anything akin to the TSA’s negative press — another real-world lesson born of experience, but the Europeans don’t pay his union dues.

In allowing privatization, Congress required the TSA Administrator to determine “that the approval (of private screening) would not compromise the security or detrimentally affect the cost-efficiency or the effectiveness of the screening of passengers or property at the airport.” In other words, TSA itself must agree that they do at least as good a job. TSA also continues to maintain overall regulatory responsibility, and the local TSA Federal Security Director provides oversight of the privatized operations, no matter who is running them.

In brief, the privatization program was successfully piloted at five volunteer airports representing a full range of risk profiles, eventually expanded to the current 18 airports that prefer an approach of business over bureaucracy. Thirteen more airports have applied; one is in the application adjudication phase, two are in the source selection phase, and ten have discontinued commercial air service, so screening is no longer required there. The private screening employees are required to maintain precisely the same qualification criteria of Federal TSOs, receive no less pay than Federal TSOs, endure the same training and testing, and are subject to a proven business model of effective management rather than that of the government agency consistently rated by the annual Partnership for Public Service survey of its own employees, including screeners, as the worst place to work in government.

Hardly a ringing endorsement of Mr. Cox’s AFGE leadership of the TSA workforce.