If you enjoyed earlier meltdowns by Southwest and American, you’ll be sure to enjoy the Thanksgiving industry-wide air-travel meltdown that awaits America in less than two weeks. With more Americans expected to travel this year than previous years, due to pent-up delayed family visits, the sheer number of travelers itself is sure to overwhelm a tired and tapped-out system.
On top of the volume, President Biden’s Covid-19 vaccine mandate for federal workers is set to take effect on Nov. 22, in the middle of the busiest travel week of the year. Why does this matter? The issue relates to TSA agents, many of whom have yet to provide their vaccination status and may end up being sent home or placed on unpaid leave days before airports need the most personnel present to keep travelers moving.
It’s a very predictable situation that many analysts see coming on the horizon, but one which the Biden administration seems uninterested in preventing. The TSA has been warning about staffing shortages all year, and the November vaccine deadline may cause the problem to severely worsen at the worst possible time:
In June the agency warned of serious staffing shortages at nearly 150 of the nation’s airports. The situation was so bad that TSA office employees were asked to volunteer at airports for up to 45 days.
Given these existing issues, the timing of President Biden’s Nov. 22 vaccine mandate for federal employees — just three days before Thanksgiving — could not be worse. As of October, only about 60 percent of TSA workers were vaccinated. If employees call in sick or organize a walkout days before the holiday, it would create a nationwide travel nightmare for potentially hundreds of thousands of people, leading to massive delays and waves of flights being canceled. President Biden could get stuck with a Reagan-air traffic controllers situation.
It’s not just airport security, of course, it’s airlines as well. There have already been documented instances where airlines faced revolts from employees over threats of termination or unpaid leave until workers complied with mandatory Covid-19 vaccination. Southwest Airlines went so far as to back down and state that workers with pending medical or religious exemption requests would not be terminated after the company-imposed deadline in December.
As for the TSA problem, the Biden administration may be up a creek when it comes to its own self-imposed deadlines that were clearly not well-vetted or well-timed. The labor union representing TSA agents is now pleading with the Biden administration to postpone the vaccine mandate deadline until after the new year to avoid massive problems:
A union that represents some 700,000 government employees on Tuesday asked the White House to give workers until Jan. 4 to comply with a Biden administration vaccine mandate instead of a deadline just before Thanksgiving.
Most federal workers have until Nov. 22 to get immunized against Covid under the Biden administration’s order.
The American Federation of Government Employees, which represents Transportation Security Administration officers, food inspectors and tens of thousands of others, called it unfair to have separate deadlines for federal contractors and federal employees.
“This double standard has caused confusion and distress among federal employees due to disparate treatment and incongruent deadlines for people who perform the government’s work in the same settings,” Everett Kelley, AFGE’s president, wrote Tuesday
As noted, Biden’s mandate on private businesses with more than 100 employees has already been pushed down the road into January to avoid conflicts with the busy holiday season. Federal workers, so far, aren’t getting a similar reprieve.
Instead of working to fix any of these issues, the Biden administration is ignoring them and ridiculing anyone who asks questions. There is no room for dissent or debate when it comes to mandatory Covid vaccination within the halls of the White House. The fact that every part of the economy, from private businesses to public labor unions, are asking for delays or exemptions from Biden’s vaccine mandate should illustrate just how disastrous the entire policy has become.
Americans are set to once again pay the price on Thanksgiving for Joe Biden’s blundering presidency limping along leaving trails of chaos and destruction behind it.
