Tom:
An "all-out bid" that consists of fiddling and talking? Astonishing. The
untold story is that wars cannot be fought on just-in-time flexible labour
practices. As Michael Moore and Paul Krugman each pointed out recently,
"airport security" is an oxymoron when security guards are paid $9.00 an
hour. If policymakers believe that fiddling with interest rates and talking
about confidence will stabilize the world economy, which was already headed
into a recession, we're in really big trouble. Let's hope they were buying
time while they figure out what to do. But we can't assume that.
NY Times:
AFTER THE ATTACKS: AIRPORT SECURITY
Even Workers Can See Flaws In Airlines' Screening System
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE and CHRISTOPHER DREW
09/14/2001
The New York Times
Even before the hijackings on Tuesday, Kevin McCree, who
has worked for four years in the critical
job of checking airline passengers for guns, bombs and
knives, said he knew that the airport screening
system was failing badly.
Although federal rules bar screeners from spending more
than 30 minutes at a time in front of X-ray
machines to inspect for dangerous objects, Mr. McCree said
he often had to work 60, even 90 minutes,
in front of the screens.
''When you sit there for an hour or an hour-and-a-half, it
gets really hard to concentrate,'' said Mr.
McCree, who earns $7 an hour as a preboarding screener at
Oakland International Airport in California.
''Looking at the screen for hours each day can be boring,
frustrating, tiresome.''
For more than 25 years, federal investigators have worried
about the repeated failure of screeners to
detect and intercept dangerous objects before they are
carried aboard airplanes. And as officials
investigate how hijackers were able to take weapons aboard
four planes on Tuesday, they are focusing
on the nation's 18,000 airport screeners as one of the
weakest links in the security chain.
A major problem is the high rate of turnover, which results
in an unusually inexperienced work force.
The screeners' pay is so low, often just $6 or $7 an hour,
that turnover is more than 100 percent each
year at the nation's large airports, and more than 200
percent at Logan International Airport in Boston,
where two of the hijacked flights originated.
One Logan Airport screener, who insisted on anonymity for
fear of being fired, complained that he
earned little money in a job in which he worried he could
face physical attack. ''I don't make enough
money to risk my life,'' he said.
Across the nation, airlines often award the job of airport
screening to the lowest bidder. Some large
security companies have largely left the screening business
because, officials say, they have to submit
such low bids to win contracts that it is hard to hire a
reliable work force.
''These workers are not paid enough and they're asked to do
a very difficult job,'' said David S.
Stempler, president of the Air Travelers Association, a
passenger advocacy group. ''They're getting
the lowest-wage people who otherwise might be flipping
hamburgers. It's a system in many ways set
up for failure.''
Airlines defend the system.
''We have good contractors at all of the screening
checkpoints in our domestic system,'' John Hotard, a
spokesman for American Airlines said. ''They do a good job
for us.''
In the United States, four companies dominate the screening
business: Argenbright, Globe Aviation,
Huntleigh and International Total Services. All but
International are European-owned. In Europe,
national governments often run airport security and so the
screening companies' European parents
often pay employees $30,000 a year, while screeners at
American airports generally earn less than
$15,000 a year. In some European countries the turnover
rate is 5 percent.
''The central weakness is that you're delegating a national
security concern to private corporations --
the airlines -- and local governments -- the airports --
and you're not giving them the money to do it,''
Paul S. Hudson, director of the Aviation Consumer Action
Project in Washington, said. ''And they, in
turn, are bidding it out to the lowest bidder.''
Mr. Hudson said the federal government should control
airport security, much as Israel and many
European nations do.
Parting from its traditional position, the Air Transport
Association, the trade organization formajor
airlines, said on Wednesday that it wanted to look at
having the federal government run the passenger
screening process.
Last year, Argenbright pleaded guilty and agreed to pay
$1.2 million for falsifying records, for doing
inadequate background checks and for hiring at least 14
airport workers in Philadelphia who had
criminal convictions for burglary, firearm possession, drug
dealing and other crimes.
In 1978, the Federal Aviation Administration found that
screeners failed to detect guns and pipe
bombs 13 percent of the time in compliance tests, while in
1987, the agency found that screeners
missed 20 percent of the time. Since then, the agency has
stopped releasing figures.
Like many screeners, Danilo Orcullo, who works at Oakland
Airport, has to work two jobs to make
ends meet.
''Usually I sleep just three to four hours a night,'' Mr.
Orcullo said, adding that the screeners need a
union. ''Sometimes I'm very sleepy at the checkpoint.
Sometimes the screeners close their eyes. The
passengers will say, 'Wake up. Wake up.' ''
On Tuesday the hijackers carried small knives and box
cutters. Some security experts say that even a
vastly improved screening system could not have detected
those weapons.
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