Terrorism: October 22, 2001

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The debate continues over the future of airport security screeners. These are currently low-paid employees of lowest-bidder contractors. The work is hard and the pay is low; few stay more than a few months. With massive turnover, the state of training is low. They often fail to follow their trained procedures and catch security tests. The airlines (which currently pay the contractors) have long wanted to have the Federal government take over this security task due to its cost. Democrats in Congress want to create a new airport police agency that would fill these posts with better trained and paid personnel who would, presumably, make a career of it and stay long enough to become experts. Republicans in Congress (and President Bush) want a compromise plan, in which the contractors would continue to provide the bulk of the screeners, but new Federal airport police would have a supervisory role, making sure that the contractor-employee screeners follow their training. In theory, the contractors would have to pay for better people (or enough to keep the people they have) and would then get more from the airlines. The concept of having the employees of one company supervised directly by Federal police is somewhat bizarre, but similar "inspection" regimes exist in many government contracts. President Bush and the Republicans in Congress do not want to hire thousands of expensive new government police. --Stephen V Cole


 

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