Vaccine rollout misses TSA screeners, air-traffic officials

Bloomberg

They’re essential workers performing critical safety work and have been assigned priority designation to receive the coronavirus vaccine.
Yet tens of thousands of airport security screeners, air-traffic controllers and federal accident investigators who must report to work in spite of the virus ravaging the US haven’t gotten the shot and aren’t sure how and when they will. “It’s incredibly frustrating,” said Jennifer Homendy, one of five members of the National Transportation Safety Board. “The vaccine rollout from my point of view has been mismanaged.”
The problem, according to multiple officials, is that the shots are being delivered by scores of state and local health agencies, which are using varying standards for who should be given priority.
In some cases, employees have been told they qualify for the vaccine, only to be directed back to their employer after saying they work for the federal government, Homendy said.
Nowhere has the impact been more severe than among the roughly 50,000 TSA Transportation Screening Officers. So far in the pandemic, more than 6,100 TSA employees, most of them airport screeners, have contracted coronavirus and 14 have died, according to TSA.
Hydrick Thomas, president of the American Federation of
Government Employees TSA Council 100 union, said he has fielded repeated complaints from his members about the lack of
access. “TSA has been pushed to the back of the line for some reason,” Thomas said.
“We are protecting the country. When it comes down to protecting the employees, they are very lackadaisical.”
About 14,000 air-traffic controllers at the Federal Aviation Administration have also been required to work in the close confines of airport towers and windowless control centres across the country. So far, more than 900 at 313 facilities have contracted coronavirus, according to the agency.
The acting secretary of Homeland Security, reacting to concerns from its workforce over lack of access to the vaccine,
established a task force called Operation Vaccinate our Workforce, according to a letter.
Thousands of FAA employees who conduct safety inspections, maintain critical equipment and travel to plane crashes have been waiting to find out when they can be vaccinated.