Tucked into the 4,000-plus-page omnibus spending bill that's making its way through Congress this week is a provision that will provide huge pay increases to Transportation Security Administration (TSA) workers and will make the agency more difficult to abolish or privatize.
The omnibus bill incorporates portions of a bill passed by the House in July that aimed to bring TSA employees under the same rules that apply to all members of the federal workforce—including scheduled pay increases and full collective bargaining powers. Rep. Bennie Thompson (D–Miss.), that bill's sponsor, said at the time that its passage could provide average pay increases of about 30 percent to current TSA employees. The bill aimed to put TSA screeners on the same pay scale as other Homeland Security Department agencies, like U.S. Customs and Border Protection, according to Government Executive, a trade publication covering the federal bureaucracy.
