Karin Demirjian

You know, that's not a lot of money to build up savings.

And so what we're seeing is that these TSA workers are having to find sources of funding to get them through life and having to seek out other gigs here and there.

You know, they're running out of the ability to feed their kids in some cases, right?

And so you are seeing a pain on a personal level happen and them having to make money

on an individual basis, cost-benefit analyses of, you know, do I show up for my job knowing I will eventually get a paycheck for that once this shutdown ends, or do I find money that I need now?

Happening on a scale of several tens of thousands of people, and it's concentrated in these areas that end up having more difficult cost-of-living sorts of situations for more of the TSA workers than others.

So there's two kind of factors to think about this.

One is what is your cost of living in the area in which this airport is, right?

JFK, it's a pretty expensive area, right?

And so when you're talking about bills that are piling up, those are pretty big bills.

But then think about places like Houston.

Houston's been a persistent problem with the long security lines.

And Houston, it's a huge, huge metro area.

It's like 80 miles across, if not more, right?

And so then the question becomes, well, okay, it's also gas in the car.

It's also hours that I have to spend on the road not finding other sources of income to keep my family going.

There's multiple factors that each TSA worker has to take into account when they're kind of determining what's the budget I have to meet in order to not go into so much debt that I am risking eviction.

So the union that represents TSA workers will push back hard against any sort of suggestion that these are like organized political statement sort of call-outs where people are calling in their absences.

And say instead that, you know, this is just reflecting the reality of what everybody who's working in those particular areas that have seen the longest security lines is having to go through.

Which is why you've seen in places like Houston, the number of call-outs on certain days go up above 40%.