NEWARK

—Suspensions meted out last week to 22 baggage screeners at Newark Liberty International Airport were face-saving measures by the Transportation Security Administration after the agency tried to fire the workers for doing precisely what they had been trained to do, a lawyer for the screeners said today.

"They’re spinning it to make it look like they accomplished something," the lawyer, Philip Taubman, said of a year-long investigation into lax screening followed by six months of hearings. "It was face-saving,"

The screeners represented by Taubman were among 25 the TSA tried to fire and 19 others it sought to suspend in October following an investigation into lax baggage screening at Newark Liberty.

The TSA announced Friday that hearings had resulted in four dismissals and six exonerations. Among another 32 cases that ended in suspensions, many had been proposed as dismissals or as longer suspensions. In the two other cases, one screener resigned and another is awaiting a final determination.

Taubman, whose clients are members of Local 2222 of the American Federation of Government Employees, said even the suspensions in lieu of dismissals were unjust because his clients were doing their jobs according to their understanding of standard operating procedures in place at the time.

The main finding of the investigation was that screeners assigned to bag room 2B in Terminal B were failing to hand search bags that screeners in another room had flagged using explosive detection technology.

Taubman conceded his clients were videotaped in November and December 2011 forwarding bags from room 2B to aircraft without hand-searching them. But, he said, his clients had been trained to screen bags using the explosive detection technology and room 2B was equipped with one, so their understanding was that they should use the technology and then hand-search only the bags that were flagged.

The practice made sense, Taubman said, because bags were routinely forwarded to 2B even if they hadn’t already been flagged.

Taubman said the TSA’s own actions amounted to a tacit recognition of his clients’ innocence, when the agency issued a clarification of its baggage screening standard operating procedures in April 2012. The clarification, he said, explicitly stated that all baggage sent to any bag room must be hand-searched.

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"That's when the officers were advised for the fist time that every bag that came down there had to be opened," said Taubman, who called it a "collossal waste of taxpayer money" that his clients had been placed on paid administrative leave for six months while the hearing process played out.

In a statement, TSA spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein defended the actions taken against the screeners.

"Our decision to take disciplinary actions as a result of a thorough investigation reaffirms our strong commitment to hold all of our employees-management and officers-to the highest standards of conduct and accountability, regardless of their rank in the agency," Farbstein said. "The decision also reaffirms TSA’s commitment to its due process procedures as several employees first thought to be involved were cleared from any wrong-doing, and many others were found to have a lesser degree of culpability."

RELATED COVERAGE

• TSA fires 4 screeners, suspends dozens in wake of probe at Newark Liberty airport

• TSA plans to fire 25 employees, suspend 19 for improper screening of bags at Newark airport

