Today is “D” day, for “dreaded” for TSA workers because this is the first paycheck they’ve missed and the heat is on. The average TSA worker makes $35,000 a year, and the majority of them live paycheck to paycheck. They’re doing what they have to do to survive. New York Times:
The workers, many of them still in their T.S.A. uniforms after finishing their shifts, showed up to collect food at a makeshift pantry the foundation set up in a parking lot near the airport, said Kathleen Lee, director of services for the foundation. She said the foundation would continue offering food to federal employees twice a week at the White Oak Missionary Baptist Church in Cary, N.C., for “as long as necessary.”
Ms. Lee said the workers were not sheepish about accepting the handouts. She said that one of them told her, “If I’m getting free groceries then I can pay my light bill.”
“It’s difficult to budget things like food, or knowing which bills to pay, when you simply don’t know when you’ll have money again,” said a 29-year-old man who works for the T.S.A. at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago.
This same 29-year-old man also told the Times that he had contacted all his creditors to explain his situation but none of them had a program to fit it. Apparently banks and other lending institutions never thought to provide for an instance where a sociopath trust fund baby throws a tantrum and wrecks peoples’ livelihoods over an issue involving his ego and his image. This young man has done what most people would do in his circumstance, he’s running up his credit cards. The president of the Air Lines Pilots Association was dead on, when he said that workers affected by the government shutdown were going to incur personal financial damages that would take them a long time to recover from, if at all. You can’t pay back a lot of credit card debt when you make $35,000 a year and the high interest will kill you, but Trump would have no way in the world of knowing that, and wouldn’t understand it if you tried to explain it to him.
This same TSA agent also received a letter from DHS, which he was supposed to show to his landlord. It says TSA workers “are unlikely to be able to pay for their housing for the foreseeable future,” but he said it has “been of little assistance.”
A TSA agent at O’Hare, Christine Vitel, spoke of her plight with CNN. She showed the same letter to her landlord and she’s facing eviction. RawStory:
“We just, of course, found out a couple days ago we are not getting our paycheck, and yesterday when I was at work, my son texted me a picture,” Vitel recalled. “I got a five-day notice from — I have a house, I bought a house, but I rent the land. My community sent me a five-day notice to pay on my lot rent.”
“They are aware of the permanent home security letter [letter from DHS, referenced above] I received, and they said they would work with me,” she continued. “However, when spoke to them yesterday, the receptionist Melissa stated that I needed to pay my rent, and if I don’t pay my rent within five days she’ll have to see what the manager wants to do and that could be court procedures”
“I told him, I’m not refusing to pay my rent, and I said, it’s going to be late because I’m not getting a paycheck,” the TSA agent added.
The bottom line is that in the free market place, if one person or group of people can’t pay for something, the seller goes to the buyer who can pay. And another thing that dead beat Donald Trump doesn’t understand, is that landlords have bills of their own to pay. Trump’s started a domino effect here which could affect many thousands more people, but he doesn’t care.
For the moment, TSA agents are still showing up and doing the job, because they took an oath of office and they take their oath a hell of a lot more seriously than the buffoon in the White House who caused all this mess, takes his, that much is certain. But despite that fact, don’t look for things to stay rosy.
“It’s like you feel that silent tension that’s going to build up later on,” said the [TSA] officer, a two-year veteran who lives in Queens and takes care of his parents. He said he could manage without a paycheck for now, but a shutdown lasting months or longer would be another matter.
“If it continues for a year, then the question is can you survive?” he said. Eventually, he suggested, he and his co-workers might start having to choose between food and shelter — and probably would cut back on food first.
So Donald Trump will go down in history as the first *resident to starve government workers. Either that, or as the first *resident to run them off in droves. Some TSA workers have already resigned and look for more to do so. Trump always hurts anybody who trusts him or works for him. These TSA workers and other workers affected by the government shutdown, didn’t know that they would be working for him, per se, but now they’re finding themselves going the way of all the workers Trump has stiffed. They’re getting screwed and they’re going to have to pay the price for Trump’s lack of character for years to come — while he walks away, scot free.
