93-3-3-WMR Audio on Demand presents the Preston and Steve Show podcast.

And now, Preston and Steve's news update with Kathy Romano.

It's Wednesday, January 16th.

Good morning, Kathy.

Good morning in the news this morning.

The lines at Philadelphia International Airport are still moving.

The furloughed TSA workers are still showing up to work due to the ongoing government shutdown.

TSA employees missed a paycheck on Saturday.

Some workers are relying on the kindness of others as they wait for their pay to finally come in.

TSA union president Joe Shucker said Catholic social services sent a pallet of food

Wednesday for workers to go through and take home with them what they need. Phil abundance brought in a

truck full of food to distribute to TSA employees who need the extra help. They said the truck will be

parked outside the airport where the workers head in every day to work without pay.

Okay. So are they eventually going to get paid for these hours? Yes. Yes. You're furloughed. I think you get back pay. Okay. You do. Yeah. TSA agents are essential government workers and with the partial government shutdown entering its 26 day on Wednesday, the union that represents the furloughed employees is working to make sure that they can sustain their commitment to keeping air travel safe.

According to the federal agency, unscheduled employee callouts more than doubled on Monday compared to the same time last year from 2.5% to 6.8%.

Now, in Atlanta, Houston and Washington, shortages are causing major backups.

Why is it causing major backups in other cities?

Is it just because those employees are not coming to work? That's a good question. I don't know why it's affecting other cities worse than here. Different ones, yeah. And they keep saying, you go ahead. No, they keep saying like for now, for now. And I think the union president said, I think we're going to reach a point where they're going to stop coming to work. As I know, Atlanta is having a real problem right now.

Atlanta, yeah.

That's a big hub.

And there's sickouts taking place. I know some of them are doing that. Yet San Francisco apparently is reporting great times. Yeah, so I don't know. Who knows? So it's Philly right now. Listen, I understand the sick out, but I also don't understand the sick out because you're not getting paid at all now, right? Yeah, you won't get paid. Well, no, they can take their sick. They can take their sick days. That's true. Yeah. Oh, okay. So that's what it is. Okay. Paid sick day. Yeah, but so the TSA president here in Philadelphia said that eventually they're not going to have mean is is what he's saying. If they stop showing up, he's thinking they're not going to have means to get to work if people aren't getting their paycheck, which is why these Philabundance and Catholic Social Services came in and brought them food so they don't have to, you know, spend whatever money they have left buying food. They can take some from these trucks. So Philibundas has a truck parked outside of, I guess, the employee entrance at the airport and the TSA workers can grab food to

take home with them. A businessman who built a fortune buying and selling factories and became one

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