Every longshore worker already knows what government investigators recently told Congress: the TWIC system is a failure.

GAO flunks TWIC

A report released in early May by the Government Accounting Office (GAO) confirmed the failure of expensive new scanners that were supposed to read Transit Worker Identification Credentials, or TWIC cards. The GAO described the results as “incomplete, inaccurate and unreliable.”

Bogus biometric scanners

The scanners were supposed to read and confirm special “biometric” data in each card – a feature promoted in the 2002 legislation that Congress passed as a misguided effort to safeguard America’s ports from terror attacks after 9/11.

The expensive cards – costing workers $132.50 each – were touted as “state-of-the-art” because they included the cardholder’s fingerprint and other personal data on microchips that were embedded into each card, backed-up in massive computer databases, and scanable by sophisticated card readers in order to confirm the identity of dockworkers and other maritime employees.

Congress was warned

Before the ill-fated program was even launched, ILWU officials warned Congress that requiring TWIC cards was the wrong approach. Instead, the ILWU urged legislators to focus on the systematic inspection of containers. But giant retailers, including Target and Wal-Mart opposed more container inspections because they claimed it would raise costs and increase delays. Congress quickly capitulated to these industry concerns, and focused instead on the TWIC program.

Technical experts warned Congress that the technology promised by corporate contractors backing TWIC was premature and unlikely to work as advertised. But Congress was desperate to score political points and show some progress in protecting America’s ports from terrorists, so TWIC cards became a default decision, based on faulty premises, misleading capabilities and capitulation to big business interests.

The result now is that taxpayers have been saddled with an expensive system that doesn’t work, does nothing to improve the security at the ports, and compromises the civil liberties of ILWU members and other maritime industry workers.

Profiteering on Port Security

In 2007, Congress estimated it would cost $3.2 billion to fully implement their TWIC program – not counting costs for the expensive card readers. The money that’s been spent so far has enriched private corporations, including defense giant Lockheed-Martin and temp employer Kelly Services, who were awarded lucrative contracts. And dockworkers are still required to buy and carry the expensive TWI cards – shelling out an estimated $288 million – in order to keep their jobs, while the card’s practical value is less than a driver’s license.

“TWIC has been a joke from the time it started 11 years ago,” said ILWU Coast Committeeman Leal Sundet. “It totally ignores the fact that marine terminals are not a high-value target for terrorists and that longshore workers on container terminals have no real access to the cargo.”

“Second,” he continued, “it abuses our civil liberties by subjecting us to intrusive and inaccurate background checks in order to keep our jobs,” said Sundet.

Price paid for TWIC errors

Some longshore workers have paid a heavy price for being unfairly denied a TWIC card, despite successful efforts by the ILWU to secure due process rights. While nearly 75% of those who were initially rejected decided to appeal– amounting to 50,000 applicants –and 99% of them won their appeals, the process takes around 6 months and they can’t work while their case is being appealed.

ILWU member William Ericson had his application for a TWIC card rejected in 2009 because a background check wrongly showed he was involved in a forgery case. Ericson had worked at the Port of Seattle for 12 years, but couldn’t work for 6 months, exhausted his savings, and came very close to losing his house through foreclosure. Another longshoreman from Seattle was denied because he was born on a military base overseas, that he was an American citizen. He also exhausted his life savings while waiting for his documentation from the military to satisfy the TWIC requirements.

Coast Guard ignores failure

One government agency – the Coast Guard – continues to enthusiastically defend TWIC despite mounting evidence that the program is a bust. A week after the GAO’s report panned the TWIC scanners, Coast Guard Captain Paul Thomas said his agency would pay little attention to those failures.

“We don’t see the GAO report as significantly impacting our way forward with TWIC,” said Thomas, the Coast Guard’s Director of Inspections and Compliance.

Guard lowers bar

The Coast Guard announced a creative response to the test failure by modifying original plans to put scanners everywhere; it now proposes only to require them at a limited number of facilities that handle dangerous bulk commodities and at terminals handling more than 1,000 passengers at a time. If implemented, the proposed Coast Guard rule would exclude most container ports from installing card readers.

Congress failed

Congress deserves blame for rushing into the ill-conceived TWIC program that imposed significant costs on workers and taxpayers. By rejecting the need for real container and cargo inspections, Congress allowed corporations to use “business-friendly” security schemes based on voluntary compliance, self-inspection and self-regulation to protect the public.

“The lack of real inspections and aggressive compliance is what really puts the public at risk,” said Leal Sundet. “We saw how voluntary compliance and self-regulation worked in the financial industry, and it won’t work any better for port security than it did on Wall Street.”

ILWU keeps pushing

The ILWU Legislative and Political Action Committee met in Washington during May 20-24, and made TWIC one of their top lobbying issues. As the Dispatcher was going to press, the ILWU was supporting a provision to the Department of Homeland Security appropriations legislation that withholds money from the Transportation Security Administration until they conduct a study on alternative credentialing methods, including a decentralized approach rather than the TWIC program. The ILWU also submitted comments on proposed Coast Guard rules for TWIC readers.

“This program has more holes in it than a Swiss cheese,” said ILWU International President Bob McEllrath. “We were right to oppose TWIC eleven years ago, and everything that’s happened since has confirmed our concerns.”