“The question I’m sure is on everyone’s mind, mine particularly, is: What is going on?” says Julie, a TSA agent in her early 20s. She speaks over the sound of a train in the background. She’s changed her commute to work so that she doesn’t have to pay for gas. “What is happening? Why do we have ICE agents [at the airport]?”
She’s worked for the agency for almost three years now. It started out great, and she hopes to use the job as a way into a career with the government. But two shutdowns later, her once reliable employment feels wobbly. The last paycheck Julie received, for about $720, came on February 16. But she doesn’t have any plans to quit.
“I do enjoy this job. I do enjoy the benefits that I’m getting,” she says. “I am financially stable with this pay, and the stability of the job market is not at its best.” It may be a public agency, but Julie is something approaching a company woman. “Management has told us time and time again, ‘keep the political talk to a minimum,’ especially in public,” she says. “Some people are like, ‘I wanna go home, this sucks, this stinks,’ but, you know, what can we do? We’ve just got to keep showing up to work.”
But no matter how they might feel about the job normally, many agents are at the end of their rope.
Carlton, who works at a major Midwestern airport, says he’s had to beg TSA management for gas cards: “It’s demoralizing having to go to your higher-ups and go, ‘Hey, can I please have some gas so I can keep working?’”
He’s in his early 20s, and he primarily works at baggage claim due to a self-described inability to deal with rude passengers. He remembers all of his bad encounters with travelers, citing one instance when someone called him racist because the body scanner alarm went off on them.
