The Transportation Security Administration can now be added to the list of federal agencies seeking to downsize its workforce through early retirements.
Federal Times reports TSA is planning to offer early retirements to administrative employees over the next two years.
Homeland Security Department spokesman Larry Olruskie said in an e-mail that DHS asked the Office of Personnel Management for permission to offer early retirement.
The early retirements would be offered between Oct. 1, 2011 and Sept. 30, 2013. It is unknown how many employees will be eligible for early retirement.
The Government Accountability Office and the departments of Commerce and Education have pursued similar initiatives to save money in the face of budget cuts in 2012 and 2013.
Click here to view a full list of federal agencies downsizing workforces through early retirements and buyouts.
Since TSA has only been in existence since 2002 how do any of their workers qualify for a buyout? This agency is largely worthless and the public would be better served by replacing TSA with private security firms managed by the FAA.
TSA can’t prevent crime within their own ranks with 43 TSA screeners having been arrested since December for thefts from baggage, rapes, child pornography, drug trafficking and assault. TSA has 54,000 employees and is on a pace to commit over 70 crimes at work in 2011, a rate far higher than any other agency or large corporation. In that same period, there have been 42 reported security failures and likely many more that have gone undiscovered, along with thousands of complaints and dozens of lawsuits.
The US Travel Association warned in a article in CNN this week that continuing the current TSA procedures will lead to “another lost decade” for the travel industry. They estimated earlier this year that TSA is costing the industry $1.6 billion per year in lost revenue related to people avoiding air travel because of these invasive security practices.
This agency has been an abysmal failure and done little to improve airline security, while traumatizing more passengers and their children than Al Qaeda. Our adversaries are laughing while TSA bleeds the economy dry with this senseless and expensive harassment of travelers.
The agency is grossly mismanaged, staffed by incompetent personnel and is operating against the interests and will of those they supposedly serve. It is long past time to dismantle this agency and while a sharp reduction in the size of TSA would be an excellent first step, simple layoffs would be a better mechanism.
This also may be a quiet move to retire long term workers who have exceeded radiation exposure limits, before on-the-job cancer appears. The TSA should clearly mark security areas as having x-ray equipment in use. Furthermore, address the issue of declaring staff as radiation workers (from John Hopins measurements) and issuing dosimters . Using radiation for general security is irresponsible and a public heath risk.
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