A Transportation Security Administration officer has sued the U.S. government for withholding employees’ pay during the 43-day shutdown, arguing he and other TSA officers are owed damages for the time they worked without receiving paychecks.
Benjamin Rodgers, who screens passengers at Denver International Airport, said in his complaint filed Thursday that the Department of Homeland Security violated federal wage law by paying some agency employees on time but not others. TSA officers and other “exempted” federal workers eventually received lump-sum backpay, but not until after the record-long shutdown ended.
Rodgers told HuffPost in an interview that a lot of his co-workers struggled to make ends meet while working without pay. The situation was so bad that supervisors were telling employees where to get free food from local pantries and how to take out no-interest loans, he said.
“Some of them actually had to quit and find a separate job so they could hold up their household with kids and stuff,” Rodgers said of his co-workers.
The complaint is a collective-action lawsuit that other TSA officers may be able to opt into. If a court were to award them liquidated damages, the government may have to pay the federal minimum wage of $7.25 for each hour the officers worked during the shutdown, as compensation beyond the backpay they received.
