How about, instead of retasking ICE to the airports, you give the TSA agents an ultimatum:
“Back to work or GTFO, turn in your uniforms, we will mail you a check once the funding from congress happens. Your benefits (and job) terminate on Monday if you are not at work”
And that goes for all the managers at the TSA that are allowing the “sick outs” ….up to and including Acting Administrator is Ha Nguyen McNeill. Unless these administrators have a memo dated at least a week ago protesting the allowance of the call offs, they too should be tossed out…..from the bottom to the top. Remove the rot and get people who will do the job as they should. Or shut down the TSA, I really don’t think we need them anyway and there are better places to spend the money they cost. Let the airlines pay for private security at the airports. It’s not all that hard to look for guns, knives, and hand grenades….
Either the TSA folks go back to work Monday, or gut the agency. Start over (or consider eliminating it, if you can) with people that want to work….the pay is decent if not great, and the benefits are awesome. If these TSA folks don’t want to work, others will. Fire anyone who does not report to their shift on Monday.
ICE doesn’t belong in the airports, they aren’t trained to do the job, and they are (mostly) failed police officers. I’d rather see you bring in the National Guard than ICE.
Don’t tell me “It isn’t that simple”…it IS that simple. They work for the American people, paid for by our tax money. If they aren’t gonna do the job, fire them. That’s the way it works for the rest of us, and that’s the way it should work for these people as well.
Firing people worked for Reagan, and it will work here.
The democrats Refuse to pay them.
well, duh.
Doesn’t matter, “essential workers” means they are required by law to show up for work regardless…..Like Air Traffic controllers and soldiers, sailors and marines and airmen.
Also note that they had sick outs and such even when they had not yet missed a paycheck. Remember the lines got longer even before they missed a paycheck.
Their first missed check was on the thirteenth, just over a week ago…they’ve been playing these games for a month.
They knew the rules when they accepted the job.
Fire Them!
The problem is, firing federal employees isn’t like firing someone off a job site. There’s due process, documentation, and union protection involved.
If there’s proof of an orchestrated walkout disguised as illness, yes, those involved can be fired but there’s a need for evidence of coordinated misconduct—not just a lot of people calling in sick at the same time.
Otherwise you’re opening the door to firing people for using benefits they legally earned.
No union. Illegal to form a union.
The rest is failure to show for work, which is a fireable offense.
When fully 30% of the workforce calls off and the normal is 2% or less , that is demonstrably a job action.
Even Federal employees can be fired. There is lots of precedent.
I think there are a couple things getting mixed together here.
TSA employees actually are represented now—many by the American Federation of Government Employees—so it’s not accurate to say there’s “no union.” They still can’t strike, but they do have representation and due process protections.
And yes, federal employees can absolutely be fired—but not just because a large number of people called in sick. The agency would still have to show individual misconduct, not just point to a percentage and assume coordination.
A spike from 2% to 30% might raise suspicion, but suspicion isn’t proof. Otherwise you’re essentially saying a statistical anomaly is enough to terminate people who may have been following leave policy.
And its people like you, with that attitude, that makes things like this happen., and makes government in general dysfunctional.
You somehow believe that Federal workers are somehow “more equal” than the rest of us.
I don’t see federal workers as “more equal.” I see them as subject to a different set of rules—just like private sector employees are subject to theirs.
In most blue collar workplaces, you can’t fire people based on a group assumption—you need individual documentation. That’s not special treatment, that’s basic due process.
The same applies here. If someone abused leave, discipline makes sense. But it still has to be shown, not assumed from a percentage.
When 40% of a given work group call off (See Houston for an example) then it is a Job Action. You know it and I know it, you don’t seem to be as stupid as your statement makes you look.
Make ’em show proof they were sick, or tell them to mail in their uniforms.
The management is as complicit as the TSA workers in this.
If any other workers did this, they’d be fired.
Reagan did it back in 1981, and Trump could do it today. And he should.
I realize you feel otherwise, but you are wrong. Government workers don’t get different rules, despite the semantics you are dancing around.
No work=no job. Essential workers got to show up regardless. Or they can forego those juicy benefits they would never be able to earn in the Private sector.
Enough bullshit.
Reagan fired the air traffic controllers back in 83 over the same crap. Show up or terminated. Caused a shitstorm, but it happened.
Why was there not this shit-storm the last government shut-down? Never mind the fact that it’s as wrong as three guys kissin’ to not pay military and essential government workers in the first place but who is calling the shots on this? Heads should roll.