Airport Bill Leaves Screeners Insecure

Just as their pay and working conditions were improving, thousands of baggage screeners across the country stand to lose their jobs under a provision of the new airline security bill requiring U.S. citizenship.

With its high proportion of immigrants, California is likely to be the hardest hit. About 40% of the screeners at Los Angeles International Airport are legal U.S. residents but not citizens, as are about 85% of those working at San Francisco International Airport, according to unions that represent them.

An industry trade group estimates that 25% of the nation’s approximately 20,000 screeners lack citizenship. Many more may not fit civil service requirements or pass new background checks required under the bill, which won final congressional approval Friday.

The citizenship requirement alone could complicate the transition from a privately contracted work force to one that is federally employed. Although the changes will be phased in over a year, union officials said the complex law appears to call for all screeners to be citizens within 90 days from when the bill is signed into law.

President Bush is expected to sign the legislation on Monday.

Meanwhile, most of the private security companies that provide airport screeners have substantially raised wages, hoping to retain their workers through the transition. Pay has been lifted to $9 to $13 an hour, from $6 to $7 an hour before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

The raise, along with the law approved this week, was a bitter pill for some longtime screeners at LAX, who have long lobbied for better wages and working conditions.

“All these years, nobody cares about us and then this happens,” said Esmerelda Fuentes, a screener for the nation’s largest airport security firm at the Delta terminal since 1993.

“There are a lot of good people working there. We take our jobs very seriously....If we need more training, sure. If they’re going to improve security, OK, that’s good for everybody. But it’s not fair if they’re just going to take our jobs over.”

Fuentes, who moved to Los Angeles from El Salvador in 1987, became a U.S. citizen last year in what now seems a prescient move. But many of her co-workers at Argenbright Security have not even started the process, which is costly and time-consuming. It took Fuentes a year to complete the process.

She started the screening job at the minimum wage, then about $5 an hour. The latest raise bumps her up to $12.85 an hour, enough to allow her to drop a second job--if she can keep her screening job. But Fuentes said she has no idea whether she will fit the new requirements.

That cloud hangs over the entire work force at a time when expectations for job performance are high, said Jono Shaffer, who directed organizing efforts aimed at screeners for the Service Employees International Union.

The union had organized workers at San Francisco and most of LAX and had active campaigns going at eight other airports until mid-September, when the attacks cut deeply into airline travel.

The union lobbied members of Congress against the citizenship requirement, noting that there is no such rule for pilots or members of the military, including the armed National Gurardsmen now stationed at airport terminals.

“There’s a tremendous amount of uncertainty,” Shaffer said. “It’s a huge impact. Between Oakland and San Francisco alone, close to 500 workers are going to have to find new work. And this is not a great time to be trying to find new work.”

Union representatives are working with the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, a nonprofit community organization, to set up training programs to help existing screeners move into the new federal jobs, said union researcher Eddie Iny.

“In Los Angeles, there are a lot of African American workers who started when the job paid $5.75 an hour. If those people could have gotten civil service jobs, they probably would have then,” Iny said. “Now we want to make sure these workers get the first crack at these jobs.”

Kenneth Quinn, chief lobbyist for the Aviation Security Assn., a trade group for the private security companies, said some of the existing screeners will be transferred to other jobs within their companies. “Good and very professional folks in our work force are likely to be retained by these security companies and be placed in other demanding security tasks,” such as handling security for government buildings, nuclear facilities and private sites, he said.

Others may qualify for the new federal positions, said Quinn, adding that his group “will do everything we can to ensure a smooth transition “ to the federal system in order to maintain passenger safety.

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Staff writer James F. Peltz contributed to this report.