TSA officers faced a stressful balance: maintaining the professional duty of keeping travelers safe while confronting the personal crisis of a missing paycheck. During the 35-day shutdown in 2018–2019, many TSA workers called in sick, some checkpoints closed, and travelers faced long delays.

“Since the shutdown just started, everyone’s emotions are still okay and people are showing up to work,” said Yuzhu, a TSA worker who asked that her real name not be used for fear of professional repercussions. But cracks were beginning to show. “More people are taking time off, which leads to staffing shortages.”

“If Congress can’t make a deal,” Yuzhu said, “I predict people won’t be able to afford to come back to work.”

Hundreds of thousands of federal workers received reduced paychecks. TSA officers wondered whether they would receive their next paycheck two weeks later. Under federal law, affected federal employees are entitled to retroactive pay after a shutdown ends. Yuzhu and union officials described the strain of missing a paycheck.

“How would TSA workers pay the rent, mortgage, food, gas, childcare?” asked Mac Johnson, an executive vice president at AFGE TSA Council 100, the union representing 43,000 TSA officers around the nation.

Unions began using plans developed during the 2018–2019 shutdown. Johnson said union leaders were speaking with TSA management and asking supervisors to recognize the stress employees faced. Their plan included connecting workers with local food banks and even shelters if officers were at risk of eviction.

Victor Payes, fair-practice coordinator at AFGE TSA Council 100, said union leaders were coordinating grassroots assistance while also pressing for legal and political measures. Payes said AFGE and other unions had challenged mass dismissals of unpaid essential workers during previous shutdowns. Now, Payes said, they were also pressing Congress and state and local governments for protections.

The shutdown created a clear divide inside airports. Federal employees continued working without pay, while private-sector workers such as flight attendants and baggage handlers still received paychecks. Contract workers—including janitors, wheelchair attendants, and food-service staff—could be furloughed without any promise of back pay, according to Alex Daugherty, communications director of the Transport Workers Union of America.

Luna Liu, a student traveling through a New York airport, had not noticed a disruption. “The TSA goes smoothly right now; I don’t see any impact,” she said.

Daugherty said morale would continue to fall the longer workers went without pay. He distinguished TSA screening from air-traffic control, a separate aviation function handled by the FAA. “If it’s an air-traffic controller, it can affect people’s experience at the airport,” he said. “If it’s TSA agents, lines could become extremely long.”

Union officials also worried about long-term damage to recruitment and retention. “Our bigger concern,” Payes said, “is it makes TSA become a difficult place to retain employees going forward because people will say, ‘This is the experience I have to go through. I’m going to leave for other employment.’”

Yuzhu said there was little the union could do for her in the moment. “The only thing I want is food,” she said.