Thank you for your attention.
Now, to continue the security theme of these columns, we periodically look at how the people staffing the organizations protecting our nation view their own governmental structure. These are the opinions of the workers, not their management. To do so, we review the “Best Places to Work” in the Federal Government, as published by the Partnership for Public Service. PPS interviews about fifteen thousand Federal employees across a total of 415 agencies and sub-agencies to achieve comparative rankings based on more than 70 questions that focus on their satisfaction with their jobs and their organizational missions. It comes as little surprise to anyone that out of 415 agencies, DHS Office of the Secretary and the entire TSA rank near the bottom - # 394 and 395 respectively, with employee approval index ratings of 46.1 and 45.7.
For perspective, we note that DHS is comprised of 22 individual sub-agencies, all but four of which have slightly higher ratings than the DHS Secretary – but TSA and Secret Service are slightly lower; and two - DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis, and DHS Office of Domestic Nuclear Detection are dead last... #414 (27.9) and #415 (13.7). Finally, all but a few of those ratings are significantly lower than last year. Translation: it’s getting worse. The report shows roughly double the number of people leaving the agency as those being hired. In my own business I’ve begun to get resumes of furloughed TSA employees looking for work.
These studies were published well before the government shut-down, when people were in relatively stable positions, getting paid regularly, not having to decide between paying for rent or groceries or life-saving medications... but coming to work anyway, protecting the nation in what most of them think is a lousy place to work, with low levels of satisfaction, to a job with no paycheck in sight. Would you?
Aside from the short-to-mid term concerns about aviation security – short staffing, sick-outs, closed lanes, huge wait times, missed training and a lot more -- it will be a very long time to simply catch up to the losses and disruptions in every employee’s life, and an even longer time to get back to “normal” – if we can ever figure out what that is. Call your Congressperson. Tell them I sent you. Don’t make me go down there...
