In the first two pieces on contractor pay, we explained the statutory floor and showed that TSA has already argued, successfully, that the floor means a single minimum level rather than a match of your individual pay.
This piece is about something narrower and more practical. When an officer asks what a contractor will pay, the answer that comes back is often not a wage. It is a different number that sounds like one.
Consider how the promise is being made. In a public question and answer document about its conversion to Gold+, Tampa International Airport tells travelers that the private screening operator "is required by law to provide compensation and other benefits that are not less than the level of compensation and other benefits provided to such Federal Government personnel."
That is the statute, quoted correctly. It is also the exact language TSA argued before the Government Accountability Office means a single minimum level rather than a match, and TSA won that argument. We covered that in the previous piece.
What the sentence does not tell an officer is which number it is talking about. And that turns out to be the whole question, because there are three figures attached to the same officer at the same airport, and they are not interchangeable.
The same document contains a second claim worth noting in passing. It states that officers hold a right of first refusal and "must be offered jobs before anyone new is hired." The federal regulation that creates that right, FAR 52.207-3, obligates a contractor to offer a right of first refusal to qualified employees of the predecessor, subject to the contractor's judgment about how many employees it needs and their suitability for the positions. The contractor's only firm reporting duty is to certify the list of employees it hired. A right of first refusal is a real protection. It is not a guarantee of a job, and the difference matters to anyone counting on it.
The Three Numbers
The first is the wage. This is the hourly rate that appears on a paycheck before anything else.
The second is total hourly compensation. This is the wage combined with the value of fringe benefits, expressed as a single hourly figure.
The third is the fully burdened rate. This adds the contractor's own costs on top, and it is higher still.
These are not our categories. They come from the public record in a Government Accountability Office decision, B-423995, reviewing the award of the San Francisco screening task order. That decision states that an offeror's total hourly compensation rate is a composite of its hourly anticipated wage rate and its fringe benefit rate, and it notes separately that the fully burdened rate for the same position and experience level is a different figure again.
Which Number TSA Checks
This is the part that matters.
TSA measures compliance against the middle number. In the San Francisco procurement, the price evaluation team reviewed the offeror's combined wage and fringe benefit rates and compared them to TSA's own minimum hourly rates.
Those minimums are published in the decision. For a transportation security officer with one year of experience on the contract, TSA's minimum hourly rate was $42.21. For a lead transportation security officer at the same experience level, $54.56.
Read those figures carefully, because they are the single easiest thing to misunderstand in this entire subject. They are not wages. They are combined compensation figures, and TSA compares them against combined compensation figures. The actual wage inside the winning proposal was redacted from the public decision. Nobody outside that procurement knows what it was.
What Contractors Advertise
Now set that against what the same contractor tells job applicants.
The winning contractor at San Francisco also holds SPP contracts at other airports, and it advertises those positions publicly. At Kansas City International Airport, it advertises an hourly wage of $19.64, rising to $24.33 after one year of service, alongside a stated total compensation of $27.42 including wages, benefits, and a retirement plan. At Greater Rochester International Airport, it advertises an hourly wage of $19.46 with a stated total compensation of $27.17.
The postings themselves separate the two figures. The wage is one number. The total compensation is another, roughly eight dollars higher, and the difference is benefits.
That is the same structure the GAO decision describes, presented plainly in a job advertisement. The contractor is not hiding it. But an officer comparing offers has to notice which number is which, because only one of them is what lands in a bank account.
The Federal Comparison
Federal officer pay can be checked directly, because TSA publishes it in its own job announcements.
A recent announcement for Bert Mooney Airport in Butte, Montana states that the SV-D salary range is $40,736 to $56,844, or $19.52 to $27.24 per hour, and that it includes locality pay of 17.06 percent. An announcement for Chicago O'Hare states $45,538 to $63,546, or $21.82 to $30.45 per hour, including locality pay of 30.86 percent.
Both figures correspond exactly to the General Schedule tables published by the Office of Personnel Management for those locality areas. TSA's announcements also state that the SV-D pay band is equivalent to GS-5/6.
Applying the same published locality percentages, the corresponding entry rate is $19.84 per hour in the Kansas City locality area and $19.65 per hour in the Rochester locality area.
Place those next to the advertised contractor wages at the same two airports. The contractor advertises $19.64 at Kansas City and $19.46 at Rochester. In each case the advertised wage sits a few cents below the federal entry rate for that locality area.
What That Does and Does Not Mean
Be careful here, because this is where the argument could be overstated and we are not going to overstate it.
This does not show that the contractor is paying below the statutory floor. It is not a violation, and we are not alleging one. The floor is measured on total compensation, and the contractor's stated total compensation figures are well above the federal entry wage. On the measure TSA uses, these numbers comply.
What it shows is that the two sides are measuring different things. TSA and the contractor are comparing blended figures. An officer comparing job offers is comparing wages. Both comparisons can be conducted honestly and reach opposite conclusions about whether the officer is better or worse off, because they are not measuring the same quantity.
It also does not account for what the benefits are actually worth to a specific person. A benefits package valued at eight dollars an hour is not the same as eight dollars an hour, and its real value depends on the plan, the premiums, the retirement match, and whether an individual uses it.
The Question to Ask
If you are evaluating a conversion, the useful question is not whether there will be parity. It is a request for four specific figures, by name.
What is my hourly wage. What is my total hourly compensation. What is included in the difference between those two numbers. And what is the wage after one year, two years, and five years under this contract.
If the answer to the first question comes back as a total compensation figure, that is not an answer to the question you asked.
Return to the sentence Tampa published. Compensation and other benefits, not less than the level provided to federal personnel. Every word of that is accurate. It is also measured on the combined figure, keyed to time served under the contract, against a federal benchmark that rests on appropriations. An officer reading it will hear a promise about their wage. It is not a statement about their wage.
None of this requires assuming bad faith by anyone. The structure is published, the definitions are in the public record, and the contractor's own advertisements state the two figures separately. The confusion is not manufactured. It is simply what happens when the number used to demonstrate compliance is not the number an officer thinks about when they think about pay.
The distance between those two numbers is worth knowing before you make a decision. It is specific to your airport, your classification, and your years of service, and it is a conversation worth having.
For the statutory floor and the earlier analysis, see What Private Contractor Screeners Are Actually Paid and The Word Is Parity.
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