New Airport Screener Jobs Going Mostly to Whites 

Diversity: Before the 9/11 attacks, minorities were a majority of the work force. Citizenship rule, test are questioned. 

By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR and JENNIFER OLDHAM, TIMES STAFF WRITERS 

(part 2) 

Another barrier, say union officials at LAX, is a battery of preemployment tests that includes a ninth-grade-level English exam. 

Of 120 LAX screeners who recently volunteered to take a practice English test, all flunked. Union organizers said they're concerned about the relevance of the exam to a screener's job. 

"What's getting a lot of people is the diction, which is very subjective," said Javier Gonzalez, an SEIU organizer. "This is currently predominantly a people-of-color
industry." 

National civil rights organizations complain that the TSA has not done enough to reach out to minorities.

"We've been extremely frustrated, because we've had a couple of meetings with TSA about the need to do some targeted advertising, and we have not gotten much in the way of cooperation," said Karen Narasaki, executive director of the National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium. 

"I think it's important for the employees to look diverse, because that will take away from the stereotype that the people doing the searching are all going to be
white and the people being searched are going to be people of color," she added. 

Responded Rosenker: "Our advertising schedule shows we are in ethnic publications." 

At LAX, new federal security director David Stone has been adamant that he wants to retain as much of his current work force as possible. 

"My current screening force is my family," Stone said at a recent orientation meeting in which he explained the hiring process. Screeners now at LAX are employed by private companies under contract to the federal government. 

"You're the ones protecting us day in and day out," Stone told the screeners. "I desperately want to retain every one of you." 

He faces long odds. At least 40% of the 1,200 current screeners are not U.S. citizens, ruling them out as candidates for the federal work force. 

From a security standpoint, the citizenship requirement is "strange," said former FAA official Flynn. At overseas airports--where the terrorist threat is generally acknowledged to be higher--U.S.-bound passengers are routinely screened by foreigners, Flynn pointed out. 

"Overseas, including in places like the Middle East, we have to rely on foreign nationals as screeners, and their backgrounds are checked by foreign governments," Flynn said. "It is strange that we have this insistence on U.S. citizens, but we're only doing it in the United States." 

Citizenship appears to be only one dimension of the problem. 

"A citizenship test by itself should not justify a low number of Latinos," said Cecilia Munoz, vice president of the National Council of La Raza. "Roughly 60% of Latinos are born here." 

Union representatives, who spent three years organizing screeners at LAX, allege that the TSA exam and its English test are discriminatory. Lower-income minorities will be replaced with middle-class retirees and law enforcement officers, they allege. 

"We are concerned with what's happened at other airports—the drastic demographic shifts," said Maria Loya, director of public policy for the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy. "We definitely wouldn't want to see this happen at LAX. The majority of current screeners are coming from communities that are very impoverished."

While Congress mandated that federal screeners be proficient in English, it left it up to the TSA to decide how best to accomplish that. 

Other federal agencies do not employ such a standardized English test, said Rusty Asher, a spokesman for the federal Office of Personnel Management. Instead, they check employment and educational history, and interviewers
then make a judgment about whether a job candidate has the needed oral and written English skills. 

The TSA test requires job candidates to read at the ninth-grade level or higher, said Stone, the agency's security director at LAX. 

Dan Wagner, a literacy expert at the University of Pennsylvania, said that requirement is too high for most people who are not native speakers. 

"The average reading level of adults in the United States is eighth- to 10th-grade," Wagner said. "If you look at people who are not native speakers, I would
guess that level would be two grades lower." 

English proficiency requirements for becoming a citizen are much less stringent, Wagner added. "By having a high English requirement, [the TSA] may be cutting
out some people who could be quite adequate at the job of security," he said. 

The TSA adopted the requirement after considerable study, said agency official Kolmstetter. Screener positions are now considered technical positions, not blue-collar jobs. "It is a skilled work force reading requirement, as opposed to an unskilled work force," she said. "There is a lot more reading required on the job." 

Stone and officials at the Los Angeles city agency that operates LAX are offering English classes for current screeners in the hopes of boosting their chances.

Alonso-Zaldivar reported from Washington and Oldham reported from Los Angeles.