They took on extra jobs, hit the food banks, begged their families for money, and even sold their blood to pay their bills.
Now, after working without pay for a month, an ever-increasing number of Transportation Security Administration workers have been calling out of work even though they are legally required to continue manning airport security checkpoints.
The result has been long wait times for travelers flying out of airports across the country and overwhelming stress for the TSA workers who are still on the job.
“The burden is kind of being split around everyone,” said a TSA worker in California, who, like most of the federal workers interviewed by NBC News, spoke on the condition that their names not be published. "If someone calls off one day, all the people who show up the next day are like, 'Yeah, that was tough. I’m gonna tap out.'”
Some 500 TSA workers have quit their jobs since the start of the more than a monthlong partial government shutdown, according to the latest tally from the Department of Homeland Security.
“When I took the job, I was like, ‘Oh man, this is going to be great’,” a TSA worker in New York said. “I can transfer and go to a different agency in about a year or two.”
Now, after having gone through this partial government shutdown and the one they endured last year, he’s thinking of leaving the TSA altogether.
But there is hope on the horizon, after the Senate agreed unanimously early Friday to fund the DHS and end the 40-plus-day funding lapse. This weekend it will be up to Congress to pass the measure.
Still, for many struggling TSA workers, especially those whose finances were decimated by last year's government shutdown, even if the measure to restart the DHS funding passes, it will be a long time before they're back in the black.
"We were still recovering from the last shutdown, the 43-day one, and none of our savings have really recovered," said a TSA worker from Indiana. "I had just paid off some of the debts."
The worker said he was not in a position to take what he called a "side hustle" to survive. Instead, he's had to ask his family for money just to get by and recently moved in with his sister and brother-in-law, he said.
"It’s really demoralizing too, because I’ve had to beg my sister for money," the worker said. "I’ve had to beg management for money just to be able to keep driving to work."
His sister, whose husband also works at TSA, said she is working and juggling life with a new baby at home. She said they aren't able to get any leniency on their mortgage and other bills and that they're relying on food banks to get the basics and things like diapers and baby formula.
"I’ve always been told my entire life, go to college, get a good job, get married, buy a house, do everything right," she said, growing more and more emotional as she spoke. "And I did. I’ve done everything right, and I feel like I’m being punished for being a good member of society. I feel like I’m being punished for doing exactly what I was told to do, for no reason."
Devin Rayford, who is the president of the American Federation of Government Employees union local that represents TSA workers at Memphis International Airport, said that during the last shutdown the landlords and creditors were far more understanding of his members. He said a TSA worker would present a furlough letter and, more often than not, that worker would be allowed to delay a payment.
Not this time.
"We got people facing evictions, and certain creditors didn’t want to take the furlough letter," Rayford said.
One of his co-workers, he said, was being threatened with eviction from her apartment complex because she couldn't come up with the rent.
"I have a voice recording of the person in the office telling them like, 'Hey, we understand what you’re going through, but you need to figure out how to pay your rent,'" he said.
Quite a few TSA workers are driving for Lyft and Uber "in order to make ends meet," Rayford said. But others are resorting to even more drastic measures, he said.
“You have people donating plasma and blood in order to get money to make, you know, pay their bills and things like that, which they shouldn’t have to,” he said.
Most TSA workers are considered essential workers and are required to show up even when they’re not being paid. But the number of unscheduled callouts has more than doubled at many key airports across the country.
Major airports like Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, New York’s LaGuardia Airport, Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, as well as smaller regional airports, have been reporting record wait times of up to six hours because of TSA staffing shortages.
The crisis started last month after Republicans rebuffed repeated demands by Democrats, angered by the killings of two Americans in Minneapolis by federal agents, to rein in two agencies that are also part of DHS, namely Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection. The two sides were unable to come up with an agreement by the funding deadline, resulting in the shutdown of DHS.
The Senate approved a plan in the early hours of Friday morning that funds DHS but not immigration enforcement and deportation operations. The House, however, rejected it, making it likely the shutdown will continue.
Lauren Bis, acting assistant secretary for public affairs at DHS, blamed the Democrats for the plight of the TSA workers.
“This reckless shutdown has driven nearly 500 TSA officers to quit, while thousands more are forced to call out because they can’t afford gas, childcare, food, or rent,” she said online.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said it was the Trump administration and Republicans who used the TSA workers as political pawns to avoid making changes to ICE policies that Americans are demanding.
“This could have been done three weeks ago,” Schumer said Thursday.
Antoinette Wade, president of AFGE local that represents TSA workers at 13 airports in Louisiana and Mississippi, said she was able to pick up some extra hours at the spa she was already working at part-time. She said her husband has also helped pick up some of the slack.
“Today he’s filled out applications for gyms and for pet care stores and for dishwashing services and restaurants, just whatever we can do,” she said.
Wade said she considers herself far luckier than other TSA workers who risked losing their federal jobs by using their sick days to work temporary gigs where they’re actually getting paid.
“We got to make decisions to feed our families,” Wade said. “We’re going to have to go other places, and unfortunately, some people are not going to be able to report in to work.”
But despite being able to keep some income coming in, Wade said she too has had to make some painful decisions.
“Today I woke up with severe hip pain, and I had to make a decision, do I go the doctor? Do I save the money? she said. “Based on the pain intensity, I chose to go the doctor and you know, I’m faced with the consequence of that $50 copay coming out of my checking account.”
The TSA worker in California said he picked up some side gigs working security and his landlord has not been cracking down on the rent.
“So that is truly the only reason that I’m not already broke,” he said.
But all his other creditors are hounding him despite the furlough letter he’s shown them.
“No phone company, no internet company, no credit card company accepts that letter,” he said. “So the bills got to get paid regardless.”
The California worker said he’s been able to show up for all his TSA shifts, but he’s aware that some of his co-workers just can’t afford to do so.
So while his absent TSA colleagues are working their side jobs, he and his other co-workers try to fill the gap. But with more and more TSA workers calling out, it’s getting harder by the day.
The TSA worker in New York said he picked up some shifts at the restaurant he had worked at before he got his government job. He was thrilled by the benefits of the TSA job and the possibility of promotion.
Now, he said he and his co-workers are all working part-time jobs, hitting the food banks, and reluctantly accepting donations from various charitable agencies and their families and friends.
They’re also trying to keep up a brave face at work for the airline travelers, some of whom have been forced to wait for hours to get through airport security, he said.
The travelers, he said, are rightfully angry. But for the most part, he said, they’ve also been sympathetic to the TSA workers checking their tickets and inspecting their baggage.
“The passengers, they notice, like, if we’re off or anything,” he said. “But everybody that comes through, they’re always just like, ‘Hey, thank you for coming to work today’.”
