By David Shepardson
WASHINGTON, March 30 (Reuters) – Major U.S. airports that suffered massive disruptions for weeks after 50,000 Transportation Security Administration security officers went unpaid since mid-February say operations are returning to normal.
Airports in Baltimore, Houston, New York, New Orleans and Dallas, which have all experienced massive delays in recent weeks, all reported very short lines on Monday. The standoff brought chaos and in some cases security lines topping four hours, the longest in the TSA’s nearly 25-year history.
President Donald Trump signed an emergency directive on Friday ordering TSA workers to get paid despite a failure of Congress to end the 45-day-old partial government shutdown and the Homeland Security Department said workers started getting paid Monday, the agency said.
DHS said most TSA officers on Monday received a retroactive paycheck that included at least two full two-week paychecks and plans to provide workers with the remainder of a partial missed paycheck from the beginning of the shutdown as soon as possible.
Asked why Trump did not sign the order earlier to pay TSA officers, White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said an “existential crisis” at U.S. airports prompted the emergency action last week.
Tens of thousands of other DHS workers are still not being paid.
Leavitt said Trump wants Congress to return to Washington immediately to pass legislation to fully fund the Homeland Security Department.
Absences on Friday hit a high since the shutdown began with about 12.4% of workers not showing up, or 3,560 and massive lines were reported at many major airports but fell over the weekend. More than 500 airport security officers have quit since mid-February.
More than a third of workers did not show on Friday at New York JFK. Baltimore, Atlanta and New Orleans and 45% of workers did not show up Friday at Houston’s two airports.
Democrats in Congress have held up funding for DHS while demanding changes in rules governing its immigration operations, after agents in Minneapolis shot and killed U.S. citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
Congressional Democrats had proposed funding TSA separately while negotiating over reforms on how Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents operate.
Republican leaders in the U.S. House of Representatives on Friday rejected a bipartisan Senate compromise to end the six-week deadlock over DHS funding and passed a bill to fund all of DHS.
Airports are grappling with a school spring-break travel surge with about 5% higher volume than last year’s.
Hundreds of U.S. immigration agents and Homeland Security Investigations officers began deploying at 14 U.S. airports last week to aid security screening and the White House said they would remain in place until operations returned to normal.
(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Nick Zieminski)
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