They are poorly paid and often numbed by the repetitiveness of their jobs. They quit frequently and are replaced quickly. They serve the public good, but work for private companies. When they do their jobs thoroughly, they earn the wrath of impatient travelers. And when tragedy strikes, the world holds them responsible.
They are airport security screeners -- operators of metal detectors and x-ray machines -- and, as of Tuesday morning, everyone in America wants to know what they are doing wrong and why.
Academics, journalists, government officials, union organizers -- everyone seems to agree that something needs to be done to improve the job performance of security screeners, many of whom are paid little more than minimum wage and enjoy few benefits. There are, in general terms, three schools of thought on how this might be accomplished.
The first would leave the current system -- under which airlines hire private security firms -- intact, allowing what is bound to be increased passenger desire for airport security to pressure airlines into selecting security firms with better-qualified (and presumably better-paid) employees.
Union organizers, representing a second school of thought, advocate making publicly controlled airport authorities -- rather than airlines -- responsible for hiring security firms. They point out that airports would be less likely than airlines to farm out security contracts to the lowest bidder. And they further argue in favor of unionizing employees, noting that when airport personnel enjoy higher wages and better treatment at work, turnover rates -- which sometimes approach 100 percent every six months -- are likely to decline.
The most radical option -- and the one that would dramatically change the airport security industry -- would be to federalize airport screeners and make them law enforcement agents.
Paul Dempsey, a law professor at the University of Denver and director of its program on transportation law, favors the third option. "My personal opinion is that security personnel at airports should be law enforcement personnel and they ought to have the ability to make arrests if need be," he says, pointing out that airport authorities -- while perhaps less cost-conscious than airlines -- are still not immune from the desire to save money. As a result, he argues, it doesn't matter whether airlines or airports do the choosing: contracts will still go to security firms with underpaid employees and high turnover rates.
The website of the Air Transport Association, the trade group that represents major airlines, says the organization wants the government to "look seriously" at federalization. And less tentative support comes from the Aviation Consumer Action Project, which was founded by consumer advocate Ralph Nader in 1971.
"We don't have Wackenhut guarding our southern border," says Paul Hudson, the group's executive director, referring to the private security firm. "I don't think we have time to experiment with another privatization effort."
But Jono Shaffer does not completely agree; he argues that security can be improved without federalization. Shaffer is the deputy director of the building service division for the Service Employees International Union -- the largest union in North America and the one that recently unionized screeners at airports in Los Angeles and San Francisco. SEIU has won passage of living wage laws within airport authorities and negotiated new contracts that considerably improved benefits and wages. Three years ago, screeners in both cities made $6 per hour; in Los Angeles, they now make $9.50 and in San Francisco, they make $10. Coupled with improvements in health coverage, sick leave and vacation pay, those changes should lead to lower employee turnover -- and, at least in theory, safer flights. SEIU doesn't have statistics on whether the turnover rates in Los Angeles and San Francisco are down. But "anecdotally," says Shaffer, "it's just dramatic."
For Shaffer, however, increased wages are not the main benefit of unionization. After all, he points out, "We can figure out how to legislate wages . . . without a union." The real security benefit, he argues, is that screeners are no longer afraid to speak up when something goes wrong -- with the equipment or the security process in general. Built into the contracts SEIU negotiated in Los Angeles and San Francisco are specific clauses that protect whistle-blowers. "Anybody that works knows that those who speak up face reprisals and that's where the strength of a union contract makes a difference," he says. "Workers have to have the unfettered and guaranteed ability to speak up without fear."
Stephen Lerner, SEIU's building service division director, says unionization of airport security personnel would move America closer to the European model, where private firms also take charge of airport security but pay employees (who are unionized) far higher wages than in the U.S. For instance, he notes that airport screeners in Frankfurt make $30,000 per year -- roughly twice the annual income of anyone receiving American minimum wage.
In fact, many of the same firms that provide security services in American airports are based in Europe and provide similar services there as well -- reinforcing SEIU's contention that wages can rise without the federalization of screeners.
According to both Lerner and Shaffer, SEIU doesn't, per se, oppose federalization. It simply believes that any plan to federalize all security screeners is unlikely to take effect in the near future, if ever -- which is why the union is focusing on ways to address problems within the industry's current framework.
And then, of course, there is the invisible hand of the free market -- rarely the popular remedy in times of demands for action, but not without its defenders.
"I do think there will be pressure for more selectivity; in order to get more selectivity, there will be higher wages," says Elizabeth Bogan, a Princeton economics professor. "Public perception and pressure will now be in the direction of greater resources spent on security." Consumer demand for better security, she contends, will push airlines and the screening firms they hire in this direction whether or not their employees are unionized.
Bogan notes that unions could indeed help the situation. "Unions that are sensitive to the issue of working well with their employees sometimes do good things for morale," and might therefore be able to improve the job performance of security personnel, she says. But she also cautions that if unionization leads to disputes between management and employees, it could harm the cause of improving security.
Besides, Bogan says, Tuesday's terrorist attacks may not have been the fault of airport security personnel at all. Of course, she is right. But that has not stopped anyone from focusing on the job performance of screeners in recent days. As a result, their wages -- and perhaps their jobs -- are bound to change. It's just a matter of how.
