In our first piece on contractor pay, we explained the statutory floor: a private screening company must pay its screeners "not less than the level of compensation and other benefits provided to" federal personnel. We showed that a floor is not a guarantee of equal outcomes, and that at San Francisco, the contractor did not pass through the 2023 federal pay raise for two years.
Since then, TSA has put a single word at the center of how it describes Gold+. That word is parity.
In its official Acquisition Planning Forecast, TSA states that Gold+ contractors must meet "all TSA statutory requirements, including security standards and compensation parity." Officers are hearing the same word at town halls this week. Parity. Your pay will be matched.
Here is the problem. TSA has already argued, in a formal bid protest, that the law does not require parity in the way you would assume. And it won.
What TSA Argued, and Won
The case is a Government Accountability Office decision, American Eagle Protection Services, B-422346.
A screening contractor challenged the terms of a TSA screening solicitation. The contractor argued that the statute should require compensation tied to a screener's total years of experience, the way the federal government places its own officers on a step scale, so that an experienced screener would be paid like an experienced federal officer.
TSA took the opposite position. It argued that the statute requires only a single minimum level of compensation, and that as long as every employee is paid at or above that one level, the law is satisfied. Experience does not have to be matched.
GAO went further than agreeing. It held that even if both readings of the statute were reasonable, it was required to defer to TSA's interpretation, because TSA is the agency charged with administering the statute. That deference rationale is not specific to this solicitation. It applies whenever TSA interprets the statute it administers. So the single-floor reading is not a hypothetical position. TSA defended it successfully, GAO accepted it as the governing interpretation in that procurement, and Gold+ is subject to the same statutory provision.
Read that against the marketing. The agency now selling Gold+ to airports and officers as "compensation parity" is the same agency that argued, successfully, that the law does not require pay to track the experience you already have.
What "Experience" Means Under the Rate Tables
The same decision reveals how the floor is calculated, and it matters for anyone converting with years of service behind them.
The solicitation GAO reviewed, for Orlando Sanford International Airport, set minimum pay using tables that defined an employee's experience level by "the years of experience an employee has serving on this task order." Not total years as a screener. Experience on that contract.
This is not a single flat rate for everyone. The tables escalate. An officer with more years on the task order is entitled to a higher minimum than one with fewer. What does not carry forward is the career you bring with you. A federal officer with sixteen years and a newly hired employee enter that schedule at the same place and climb it together.
TSA defended this directly, and described its own approach in plain terms. In its filing, the agency stated that it set minimum compensation rates in the solicitation "based on the minimum pay rates of TSA screeners, accounting for seniority on the current task order." GAO summarized the agency's position as requiring pay not less than the rate provided to entry-level federal screeners, and agreed with it.
State it plainly. In the one SPP task order structure that has been litigated and reviewed, a screener's prior experience did not raise the minimum the contractor was required to pay. The required floor was keyed to time served under the new contract, starting at entry level. Whether a Gold+ task order will be written the same way is not yet public, because those task orders do not exist yet. But the precedent TSA established, and defended successfully, is that it may set the floor at entry level regardless of the career an officer brings.
Why This Is the Part That Matters
Notice who was on which side. In that case, it was the contractor arguing for the more generous, experience-based reading. It was TSA arguing for the flat floor.
That reframes the entire conversation. The contractor is not the only actor determining what happens to your pay. TSA wrote the compensation framework, and TSA defended it. And that framework, as TSA defended it, may permit an experienced federal officer to be treated as an entry-level contractor employee for purposes of the statutory floor. Your sixteen years do not have to raise the number the contractor is required to meet, because the agency that set the number has already established, in a formal bid protest, that the law does not require them to.
So when an officer is told at a town hall that the contractor must provide parity, the more precise statement is this. The floor the contractor must meet is one the agency itself designed, defended, and won the right to set at entry level.
The company that won the San Francisco contract used the same framing. In the separate protest over that award, GAO docket B-423995, the record shows the winning proposal expressly stated that its fringe benefit rates were compliant with the TSA minimum rates, the Service Contract Labor Standards, and the collective bargaining agreement in place at that airport. Not parity. The minimum rates. That is the language of the floor, from the company that won.
The Floor Points at a Moving Target
There is a further problem, and it sits underneath everything above.
The contractor's obligation is to pay "not less than the level provided to federal personnel." That guarantee is only as meaningful as the federal level it points to. And that federal level is not fixed in law.
Federal officers were only brought up to full General Schedule equivalence in July 2023, through what TSA calls the Transportation Security Compensation Plan. That alignment was not created by statute. It was funded through the appropriations process. TSA's own Human Capital team has said the agency reached parity with the General Schedule "through the appropriation process, not a directive."
The distinction matters. There is no permanent statutory guarantee that TSA officers will always be paid at General Schedule equivalence. The current structure was created and is sustained through appropriations, which makes future funding decisions relevant to the benchmark itself. That is why annualizing the pay plan remains a standing legislative priority rather than a settled fact.
So the contractor's floor is anchored to a federal pay level that rests on appropriations rather than on statute. The proposed fiscal year 2027 budget moves toward reducing TSA positions and funding. We are not going to tell you what will happen to federal pay. We are telling you that "not less than the federal level" is a promise measured against a benchmark that is not fixed in law. The floor can move, because the thing the floor is tied to can move.
Stack the three facts together. The guarantee is a minimum level keyed to time on the contract, not your individual pay. That level is set for each airport in a task order no one has seen. And the federal benchmark it points to is funded through appropriations, not fixed in law. That is what the word parity is carrying.
The Ceiling on the Other Side
There is one more constraint in the same decision, and it points the other direction from parity.
Under the statute, TSA may only enter a screening contract when the price is equal to or less than the cost to the agency of providing the services itself. For Orlando Sanford, the solicitation set that federal cost estimate at $62,895,271. The protester argued it functioned as a price ceiling that left no room to price in risk. GAO acknowledged that the estimate imposes a cap on all costs, including an offeror's ability to factor in the risk of unanticipated labor costs, and upheld it anyway, noting that a solicitation is not improper because it imposes a risk that a contractor will not be able to recover all costs.
Hold those two requirements next to each other. The contractor must meet a compensation floor. The contractor must also come in at or below what TSA would have spent using federal officers. Under Gold+, that same capped envelope has to cover the technology, the maintenance, and the contractor's profit as well.
We are not going to tell you what any company will do inside those constraints. We are telling you what the constraints are, and that labor is the largest line inside them.
What This Does and Does Not Prove
We are careful here, because your situation is specific and the numbers are not yet public.
This does not prove your pay will be lower. TSA sets the actual minimum compensation rate for each airport in the task order, and no Gold+ task order has been issued. If TSA sets that rate at the full federal rate for your position, including locality, an officer could come close to whole. If it sets it lower, they will not. Nobody can tell you the number yet, because it does not exist yet.
What this does prove is what "parity" legally means, and it is narrower than the word sounds. The guarantee is a minimum level for the position, keyed to time served under the contract, not a match of your individual pay, your steps, or the trajectory a federal career would have followed. And the San Francisco experience shows that even the floor can lag federal pay in practice, for years, before anyone corrects it.
What This Means for You
If you are told at a town hall that the contractor must match your compensation, that is the marketing word. Ask a more precise question: what is the minimum compensation rate TSA will set for this airport, does it include locality, and how does it compare, in dollars, to what I earn today?
One thing to watch for when you get an answer. In the San Francisco record, TSA's minimum rate was not a wage. It was a total hourly compensation figure, a composite of the anticipated hourly wage and the fringe benefit rate, and the agency measured compliance against that combined number. The wage inside it was redacted from the public decision. So a minimum compensation rate is not the same thing as an hourly wage, and it is worth asking for both by name.
Until you have those numbers in writing, you do not know what "parity" means for you. And the agency using the word has already argued, successfully, that it means a floor.
The distance between the word and the number is where your paycheck lives. Before you make any decision based on a promise of parity, it is worth understanding exactly what you are being promised, and what you are not. That is a conversation worth having, and it is specific to your numbers.
For the statutory floor and the San Francisco case in full, see What Private Contractor Screeners Are Actually Paid.
If you want to understand how this applies to your own situation, that is a conversation worth having. It costs you nothing. againstgiantsllc.com/get-help.html or info@againstgiantsllc.com