{"id":16306,"date":"2025-10-22T21:56:06","date_gmt":"2025-10-22T21:56:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/16306\/"},"modified":"2025-10-22T21:56:06","modified_gmt":"2025-10-22T21:56:06","slug":"tsa-workers-brace-for-hardship-from-working-without-pay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/16306\/","title":{"rendered":"TSA workers brace for hardship from working without pay"},"content":{"rendered":"

WEST PALM BEACH \u2014 Transportation Security Administration employees on Wednesday described in detail their financial hardships \u2014 bracing for not getting their much-needed paychecks by the end of this workweek.<\/p>\n

They shared their stories as congressional leaders in Palm Beach County called for the end of the federal government shutdown.<\/p>\n

U.S. Reps. Lois Frankel and Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, South Florida Democrats, joined members of the American Federation of Government Employees \u2014 a federal employee union\u00a0\u2014 on Wednesday for a news conference aimed at urging federal lawmakers, particularly Republicans, to negotiate an end to the shutdown.<\/p>\n

The shutdown began<\/a> on Oct. 1 after Republican and Democrat lawmakers failed to agree on a short-term budget, with one of the primary contentions<\/a> being whether tax subsidies should remain for those who get their health insurance through the Affordable Care Act.<\/p>\n

Frankel and Cherfilus-McCormick are among the Democrats who want to preserve the subsidies, fearing skyrocketing premiums if the subsidies were to vanish.\u00a0\u201cDemocrats have taken the position that we will not vote for a budget that cuts millions of people out of health care,\u201d Frankel said at the news conference outside of Palm Beach International Airport.<\/p>\n

But as this stalemate continues and becomes one of the longest shutdowns on record, federal government employees are caught in the middle. If the shutdown persists, TSA employees will miss an entire paycheck by the end of the week but still are expected to work.<\/p>\n

\"AFGEAFGE Local 558 President John Hubert speaks during a news conference held next to the Palm Beach International Airport in West Palm Beach on Wednesday, Oct. 22, 2025, to call for an end to the U.S. Government shutdown. (Amy Beth Bennett \/ South Florida Sun Sentinel)<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople won\u2019t be able to pay their mortgages, their tuitions, any kind of bill,\u201d Cherfilus-McCormick said. \u201cThis is not the America that we love and that we care about and we cherish. This is not the country that we all fought so hard to actually preserve. And so we would like for Republicans to come to the table. Let\u2019s find something reasonable to make sure that all Americans actually have an opportunity to survive.\u201d<\/p>\n

John Hubert, president for the American Federation of Government Employees Local 558, said some TSA employees have resorted to picking up second jobs as Uber drivers or delivering food with DoorDash just to get by.<\/p>\n

\u201cI need the American people to understand that we live in the community just like you. We\u2019re no different than anybody else,\u201d Hubert said. \u201cWe need people to come to the table and start negotiating because it\u2019s getting to the point that your own constituents are going to be suffering.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"MickeyMickey Alston, the American Federation of Government Employees PBI Airport vice president and Local 558 women\u2019s fair practice coordinator, speaks during a news conference held next to the Palm Beach International Airport in West Palm Beach on Wednesday, Oct. 22, 2025, to call for an end to the U.S. government shutdown. (Amy Beth Bennett \/ South Florida Sun Sentinel)<\/p>\n

Mickey Alston, the American Federation of Government Employees PBI Airport vice president and Local 558 women\u2019s fair practice coordinator, said one of her colleagues recently bought diapers for another colleague who was struggling to pay for food, bills and baby supplies.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe come to work every day whether we\u2019re getting paid or not because we like what we\u2019re doing. We\u2019re sworn in to do a job and that\u2019s what we\u2019re doing,\u201d Alston said. \u201cI do have a concern as far as how are the workers going to get to work. Because that\u2019s the issue, it\u2019s not that we don\u2019t want to come to work, it\u2019s how we\u2019re going to get to work if we don\u2019t have the gas money to put gas in our cars to get to the place we need to be to protect the American people.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WEST PALM BEACH \u2014 Transportation Security Administration employees on Wednesday described in detail their financial hardships \u2014 bracing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16307,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29,114,266,557,109],"class_list":{"0":"post-16306","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-florida","8":"tag-florida","9":"tag-florida-headlines","10":"tag-florida-news","11":"tag-latest-headlines","12":"tag-local-news","13":"tag-palm-beach-county","14":"tag-social"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16306"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16306\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}