Federal Daily - May 8, 2008

TSA Launches Employee Screening Demo Projects

In an effort to improve airport security, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) on May 6 announced the start of airport employee screening demonstration projects at seven airports around the country. The 90-day experimental projects are mandated by the Fiscal Year 2008 Omnibus Appropriations Act and are intended to figure out ways to better screen airport employees, TSA said in a statement. TSA currently deploys a “layered” approach to airport employee security that includes random screening, checkpoint screening for other groups of employees and “surge” inspections. The projects will test the efficacy of other approaches, such as the screening of all employees and vehicles passing from public to secured areas. The seven airports, selected from a list of 100 facilities that volunteered, are: Boston’s Logan International Airport, Jacksonville International (Fla.), Craven Regional (N.C.), Denver International, Kansas City International, Eugene (Ore.), and Southwest Oregon Regional airports. “We look forward to working with these airports to evaluate the cost and effectiveness of various ways to enhance employee screening,” said Kip Hawley, TSA administrator. To see more, go to: www.tsa.gov/press/releases/2008/0506b.shtm.

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FBI Raids Special Counsel’s Office, Home

FBI agents on May 6 raided and searched the office and Alexandria, Va., home of Special Counsel Scott Bloch. Jim Mitchell, communications director with the Office of the Special Counsel (OSC), confirmed to FEND that federal agents searched Bloch’s work area and computers. He said the office was cooperating with the investigation. “We do not yet know what this is about,” Mitchell said in a statement. He added that “we are continuing to perform the independent mission of this office.” The FBI raids were made in connection with a probe into potential obstruction of justice charges involving files that Bloch allegedly hired a company to erase from his computer, according to published accounts. The request to eradicate those computer files came while Bloch was being investigated by the Office of Personnel Management Inspector General in connection with a complaint submitted by a group of anonymous OSC employees and a number of watchdog groups. Last week, attorney Debra Katz, who represents the groups and the anonymous OSC employees, renewed her call for Bloch’s ouster. www.whistleblower.org/template/index.cfm.

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Appeals Court Upholds Unfair Labor Charge Against USPS 

An appellate court has upheld an unfair labor practice charge against the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) in a case involving a supervisor who threatened to retaliate against a postal worker who had filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit rejected USPS claims that the supervisor was exercising his rights under the First Amendment when he threatened to sue the employee, the American Postal Workers Union (APWU) said in a May 5 statement. The supervisor was acting as an agent of the Postal Service when he made the threat, the court found, and his “illegal speech” was not protected by the First Amendment. In an earlier ruling, the NLRB ordered USPS to “cease and desist from threatening employees with a lawsuit or other reprisals for filing unfair-labor practice charges” and to stop interfering with employees’ rights under the National Labor Relations Act, APWU noted. To see more, go to: http://apwu.org/news/webart/2008/webart-0838-ulp_retaliation-080505.htm.

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