"Eight Sea-Tac TSA supervisor promotions revoked"

Saturday, June 12, 2004

Eight Sea-Tac supervisor promotions revoked 
By Cheryl Phillips
The Seattle (WA) Times

 
Eight screening supervisors who were promoted into their positions in
January at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport had their promotions
rescinded this week as part of an ongoing investigation into personnel
practices. 

All eight positions will be reopened for applications and the eight
employees are encouraged to apply, said Jennifer Marty, a spokeswoman for
the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). Meanwhile, other workers
will fill those slots temporarily. 

The agency's top official in Washington, D.C., acting administrator David
Stone, has been giving direction on how to handle the issue, Marty said.
Stone decided the eight employees will keep their supervisory pay after
returning to their previous jobs, Marty said. 

"We just felt that there was no need to cause any kind of hardship," she
said. "Because this wasn't something they did." 

The TSA decided to repeat the promotion process after finding problems,
according to a memo to employees from John C. "Jack" Kelley Jr., the new
federal security director at Sea-Tac. 

A review has "identified actions that violated either the letter or spirit
of TSA's merit-based HR (human-resources) policies," Kelley wrote in the
memo delivered Thursday. "TSA is correcting these actions and addressing the
flaws in decision-making that led to them." 

Kelley has created a system to better inform employees of new positions and
is forming a committee to serve as a neutral forum in the hiring process.
Additionally, if a manager recommends a particular person, he has to recuse
himself from the final decision. 

The move follows complaints by employees that the promotions were handled
improperly. Screeners have said they believe the process involved favoritism
by managers. In addition, the contractor assigned to handle the applications
lost some of them and did not evaluate others correctly. 

In February, one manager was placed on administrative leave for allegedly
accepting money to write promotion applications for employees. Marty did not
know if that manager was involved with the eight promotions just rescinded. 

Last month, the TSA removed the airport's top four managers as part of a
broader review of operations. 

The news about reopening the supervisory jobs was "exactly what we were
fighting for," said a TSA employee who signed a petition late last year
asking for an investigation. The employee spoke on condition of anonymity
for fear of retaliation. 
 
But one TSA official familiar with the promotions expressed surprise, noting
that the eight employees had been doing a good job.


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