LAX Fills Its Screen Team

Los Angeles International Airport will boast the largest passenger screening workforce of any of the nation’s 429 commercial airports when the phasing in of 1,600 federal screeners is complete today.

The takeover is being completed two weeks before the congressionally set Nov. 19 deadline for the Transportation Security Administration to deploy screeners at the nation’s airports. As of Thursday, federal screeners were working at 272 airports.

Officials started phasing in federal screeners at LAX on Oct. 8. They pointed out that there have been no major security breaches or evacuations at the world’s fifth busiest airport since the process started. That, they said, is evidence that the security administration’s rigorous hiring and training methods are paying off.

“That’s a promising indicator,” said David Stone, the agency’s security director at LAX. “We’re pleased with initial ramp-up, but we realize we have to improve every day.”

Federal officials said they were satisfied with the ethnic breakdown of the new security workforce and the retention rate of the 1,200 LAX screeners formerly employed by private contractors.

Three out of four people in the new security force are members of minorities, compared with about 98% of the private security force.

One in four screeners employed by private companies passed a battery of tests and were rehired as federal workers.

This rate was higher than that posted at several other major U.S. airports. Private screeners who passed the exam said experience counted most.

“Being a screener over two years, you see a little of everything,” said an Inglewood resident, Cheryl Elliott, who worked for Globe Aviation in Terminal 7 and was rehired by the security agency.

“There was no way to prepare yourself for this test,” Elliott said.

About 350 private screeners who worked for contractors in the Tom Bradley International Terminal and Terminal 1, who were relieved by federal workers at midnight Monday, will take the security agency’s tests this week.

Still, advocates who represented the private screening force said they were disappointed that more workers hadn’t been rehired.

“We would have hoped that workers had a better retention rate,” said Christie Arowosegbe, a policy analyst at the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, a nonprofit group that provides assistance for screeners. “Another thing that hasn’t been addressed for the workers who have been retained is that there is no seniority.”

As for the three of four private screeners who weren’t retained, about 40% were not eligible to become federal employees because they were not U.S. citizens.

Others didn’t pass a computerized exam, which included a reading comprehension section, or failed physical and medical requirements, Stone said.

The security agency’s work at LAX is far from complete. The agency must hire about 1,600 additional workers to screen all checked luggage at the airport by Dec. 31.

So far, about 130 federal workers are screening checked bags at 54 explosives-detection machines at the facility.