Do you meet this job description?

This link will lead to a TSA website page that will describe a "Full Performance" TSO . If you can meet the requirements outlined you would fall into Pay Band "E". The pay scale for Pay Band "E" has previously been provided to you on this website. Don't forget to include the "locality" pay differential of 35.15%.

Just how many of us fall under this job description? How far behind in salary should we be compared to our TSA counterparts?

Now that you know the facts, what are you going to do about it?

http://www.tsa.gov/join/benefits/soar/tsa/tso_full.shtm

We are NOT screeners!

We hope that one of the things you have noticed over the last couple of months since the inception of this blog is that we almost never refer to the work force as "screeners." Did you know that it was in December of 2005 that TSA officially changed our title and the rest of our brethren that work for TSA across the country from TSS (Transportation Security Screener) to TSO (Transportation Security Officer). Sure, it's real easy to say that we're screeners, since we screen passengers and their luggage for bombs, weapons, and various other threats. But we shouldn't short change ourselves so easily.

The question to be asked is why did TSA do this? The reason is quite simple. They wanted to add more prestige to our job, and changing our title from Screener to Officer was an easy way to do it.

So why is it that we still refer to ourselves as Screeners? Why do we allow others and ourselves to demean ourselves by referring to us as Screeners. The job title of "Airport Screener" has years of negative connotations attached to it. After all, we just play in to Covenant Aviation Security's mindset that we're "just screeners." A Screener doesn't know anything, right? So it's not nearly as demeaning if management would say to you, "You're just an Officer!" Ahhh...all of a sudden that statement doesn't belittle us!

Covenant Aviation Security still lists us as TSS and DFS in all of their databases and CAS created documentation, even though those titles have not officially existed within TSA for almost five years. Hell, even our own union calls us "Screeners."

One of the ways to get respect from management is by refusing to allow them to call us "Screeners." Whenever you hear yourself, a supervisor, or a manger referring to us as a "Screener," correct them! Until we change the mindset of something relatively simple as what they call us, we'll never begin to get the respect that we deserve.