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<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\nThe complaint details how Supervisory Air Marshal in Charge\nRichard Altomare, the Transportation Security Administration and the Department\nof Homeland Security conspired to harass unionized employees and crush workers’\nspeech rights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe Philadelphia field office is in crisis, and workers\nthere have endured a series of failing managers who are devoid of experience\nand leadership skills,\u201d said Air Marshal Association President John Casaretti.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The complaint details how Altomare began a “despicable\nand targeted” pattern of harassment and intimidation of unionized employees\nimmediately after his 2021 appointment to lead the Philadelphia field office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In October 2021, over union protests, Altomare implemented a\npolicy of pressuring Air Marshals, including one seeking cancer treatment, to\nforgo using sick leave or other forms of paid time off for medical\nappointments. Altomare also began altering employee performance evaluations,\nespecially those of union members, to eliminate or reduce raises, bonuses, or\npromotions that they would have otherwise earned. Altomare further retaliated\nagainst employees who spoke out against his policies by “selectively”\ntargeting them for misconduct reports. The harassment culminated with some\nemployees receiving direct threats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Aviation and Transportation Security Act of the 107th\nCongress (2001-2002) enacted November 19, 2001 established the Transportation\nSecurity Administration, and granted the TSA Administrator broad emergency\npowers in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Included\nin these emergency provisions were blanket authorities for the TSA\nAdministrator to create new work rules and systems of compensation. Casaretti\nnotes, \u201cThis unprecedented authority was a human capital disaster, cultivating\nan environment of management abuse, favoritism and discrimination which\nresulted in record low employee morale, sky high turnover, unjustly stratified\npay, and waves of lawsuits.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Philadelphia Field Office issues are just the latest in\na long list of woes for Air Marshals. The Air Marshal Association is actively\neducating lawmakers about the harsh reality of working for 20 years as a\nFederal Air Marshal under the TSA systems. When common medical issues started\nto surface in the workgroup around 2011, the government commissioned Harvard\nUniversity to conduct a sleep study on Federal Air Marshals, but the full\nreport was suppressed when details about the grueling shifts, constant\nexhaustion, inadequate rest, and cognitive impairment surfaced. The agency also\nuses their pay authority to reward employees via subjective scorecards, and the\nresulting favoritism, racism, and retaliation have caused over $30,000 pay\ndifferences between otherwise equal employees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The union also points to examples of Air Marshals being\nassigned to punishing shifts without rest breaks or overtime pay, such as the\n18.5-hour long Newark, New Jersey and New Delhi, India nonstop mission and its\n20.5 hour return flight which the TSA assigned following the 2008 Mumbai terror\nattacks. In 2015, after years of Air Marshals flying these types of arduous missions\nwithout receiving intelligence briefings or explanation, Casaretti filed a\ncollective action lawsuit on behalf of his co-workers to recover the unpaid\novertime. The court recently allowed most elements of the precedential claim to\nadvance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The TSA recognized the Air Marshal Association in 2011 when\nit was forced to begin deducting payroll allotments for the fledgling group.\nNow the union meets regularly with TSA officials, collaborates with Congress on\nlaws and appropriations, and over half of all flying Federal Air Marshals are\ndues paying members.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Union members have been harassed as far back as 2009, when\nthe Association began organizing as an offshoot of a larger labor union. Since\nTSA security screeners were already well underway with organizing their\nworkgroup, the agency did not want any more employees unionizing. To help stop\nthis movement, former President George W. Bush signed an Executive Order in\nlate 2008 to add Air Marshals to a list of government workers forbidden to\nbargain collectively. This executive action did not deter Casaretti, who\nrecalls, \u201cAfter the 2008 EO was signed, they launched a series of frivolous\ninvestigations on me. All were baseless, and although I was routinely harassed\nby investigators, I was cleared and never received any discipline.\u201d Under TSA\nrules, if a manager merely opens a frivolous inquiry against an Air Marshal,\nthe employee is ineligible for raises, bonuses, transfers, and competitive job\nassignments. Some inquiries purposefully take years, and because there are no\ndeadlines for investigators to meet, careers are ruined, and managers are able\nto freeze pay increases indefinitely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Recently, a multiyear Congressional inquiry from the House\nOversight and Government Reform committee\u2019s majority and minority members looked\ninto systemic management abuse and senior official misconduct at TSA. The\nsubsequent reports made it clear that the agency\u2019s authority needed to be\nreexamined. Another oversight report made clear that Senior Executives within\nthe TSA engaged in serious acts of misconduct but escaped discipline virtually\nunscathed. When lawmakers reached out to the union for input, they received\nvolumes of data about toxic management, low morale, and an agency nurtured\n\u2018culture of fear\u2019. The union also provided examples of manager misconduct,\nwhich was investigated quickly then dismissed, versus identical misconduct\ncharges against Air Marshals which resulted in long investigations and\nproposals to fire the employee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, the 2021 assignment of Altomare to the Philadelphia\nField Office has brought TSA dysfunction to another level, with one supervisor\nsent out to \u2018hunt\u2019 for union members, and in Altomare\u2019s own words during a\nmanagement meeting, declaring \u201cit\u2019s us against them\u201d. This targeted assault\nagainst the Air Marshal Association\u2019s member\u2019s right of free association is\nwhat finally prompted the federal court filing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThese deprivations occur due to the unprecedented authority\ngranted to the TSA under the ATSA,\u201d said Casaretti. \u201cThe emergency which\ncreated the TSA is over, and it is time for Congress to place the runaway TSA\nbureaucracy back within regular government management systems.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Congress is working to remake the agency via H.R.903 \u2013 the\nRights for the TSA Workforce Act of 2021 which passed the House on May 12,\n2022, and the companion Senate bill, S.1856 of the same name introduced on\n05\/26\/2021. The bills seek to move the TSA from the controversial ATSA systems\nand place them into the established Title 5 systems enjoyed by the majority of\ngovernment workers. The union has spent 5 years working closely with lawmakers\non the legislation. For Air Marshals, it means fixing longstanding issues such\nas high suicide rates and mental health concerns, arduous duty days,\nintelligence-based scheduling, more diverse training, and ultimately aligning\nthe Federal Air Marshal Service to counter current threats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe 20th Anniversary of the 9\/11 attacks have come and\ngone, and the experienced Air Marshals hired in response to those attacks have\nalmost all retired. Each of them has paid a high price for patriotism, battling\nan abusive agency that makes up its own rules. Individually they succeed, but\nit\u2019s despite the agency and not because of it,\u201d Casaretti says. \u201cWe will\ncontinue to work with lawmakers to fix this permanently, but we hope the courts\nwill grant us some immediate relief.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The union is represented by Mario Bordogna of Clark Hill\nPLC, and Nicholas Wieczorek of Clark Hill PLC.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The case is Air Marshal Association v. Secretary of the\nDepartment of Homeland Security et al., case number 2:22-cv-02254, in the U.S.\nDistrict Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The head of the Federal Air Marshal Service’s Philadelphia office is tampering with performance reviews, pressuring workers to put off necessary medical care, and opening fraudulent investigations in an illegal attempt to harass and suppress his unionized workforce, the Air Marshal Association alleged on Wednesday June 8th. The complaint details how Supervisory Air Marshal in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[115],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22596","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22596"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22596\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22598,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22596\/revisions\/22598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}