What the Gold+ Contract Means for You: An Officer's Guide

The Gold+ contract is no longer a proposal, and it is no longer hypothetical. On June 24, TSA published the binding solicitation, the actual document companies bid against to take over airport checkpoints. Bids are due July 31. Three airports have now been told they are converting. This guide walks through what the contract says, in the contract's own words, and what each part means for you.

The contract describes its own purpose plainly. It shifts, in TSA's words, "TSA's role from both operator and regulator to security regulator providing oversight." In other words, TSA stops running the checkpoint and becomes the agency that oversees the private company running it.

Part 1: Do You Keep Your Job?

This is the question everyone asks first, and the answer has a catch worth understanding.

If your airport converts and you're displaced, you have what's called a "right of first refusal." The contract requires the company to follow a federal rule, FAR 52.207-3. The contract's words:

Here is what that federal rule actually says:

Read that closely. It is a right of first refusal for "employment openings" in "positions for which they are qualified." That means if the contractor has an opening you're qualified for, you get first crack at it before they hire someone off the street. After award, TSA gives the company a list of affected officers, and the company reports back on who it hired within 90 days.

It's an offer you can take or leave, not a job you're forced into, and not a job you're guaranteed. The right applies only to openings the contractor decides to create, only to positions you're qualified for, and the contractor decides who's the best fit. The contractor's only hard obligation under this rule is to report to TSA who it hired from the list. It is not required to hire any particular number of officers.

Part 2: What Your Pay Is Protected At, and What It Isn't

The contract keeps one pay protection in place. Under the law it operates beneath, a private screening company must provide compensation and benefits, in the contract's words, "not less than the level of compensation and other benefits provided to such Federal Government personnel." So the contractor cannot pay below the federal floor.

But read that carefully. "Not less than" protects the floor. It does not protect what you actually earn today if your pay sits above that floor, and it does not mean your federal benefits carry over. Your FERS retirement, your FEHB health insurance, and your leave accrual are federal benefits tied to federal employment. A contractor job is private employment with the contractor's own benefits.

Part 3: What the Contract Asks of You

Under Gold+, your performance becomes part of a company's bottom line in a way it never was as a federal officer. The contract pays the contractor bonuses for exceeding performance targets and penalizes it for missing them:

Some of those scored targets are about you directly. The metric list includes "Officer image interpretation" and "Officers demonstrate Command Presence." How well you read X-ray images and how you carry yourself are line items that move a company's revenue up or down.

Part 4: What Happens If the Company Fails

The contract itself plans for the possibility that a Gold+ contractor could go broke. It requires every contractor to keep a funded reserve:

What to Do Now

You don't need to do anything dramatic today. No airport is named, and nothing converts overnight. But this is the moment to know your own numbers, while there's time to think clearly: your service computation date, your retirement eligibility date, your high-3, whether you've held FEHB long enough to carry it into retirement, and the difference between an offer you can turn down without losing your severance and one you can't.