Security officers at OKC FAA facility say federal contractor violated court orders

OKLAHOMA CITY (KFOR) — Security officers protecting a key FAA facility in Oklahoma say they’re prepared to strike, accusing their employer, a federal contractor, of defying court orders while continuing to violate their union’s collective bargaining agreement.

The officers all work at the Mike Monroney Aeronautical Center (MMAC) in Oklahoma City.

They say their employer, federal contractor DFW Security Protective Force, has violated their collective bargaining agreement by underpaying officers, forcing them to work with unsafe equipment, and more.

The say DFW Security Protective Force has ignored orders from federal courts telling them to repay officers for missed wages.

The MMAC is the FAA’s main national training hub for air traffic controllers.

It’s a pretty important place, and protecting it is a job security officers Randy Hampton and Diana Rattler-Bryceland treat with a heavy respect.

“It’s a facility that we take pride in,” Rattler-Bryceland said.

“I feel, you know, the responsibility, and I take it seriously over there because if you don’t do something, something can happen, and you don’t want that to happen,” Hampton said.

Rattler-Brycleand and Hampton are, respectively, President and Vice-president of UGA Local 100, the union representing all 53 security officers at MMAC.

“Everyone on that contract as a security officer holds their job to a high standard,” Rattler-Bryceland said. “And we don’t have to ask for them to do better because they do their best all the time.”

But lately, they say they’ve had to jump through some hurdles to maintain that standard.

“We have vehicles with over 100,000 miles on them that we’re driving that break down,” Hampton said.

“The brakes go out,” Rattler-Bryceland said. “We’ve had employees in these trucks in subzero temps without subzero gear being provided to them, without heaters.”

They say all the problems are tied to the company the federal government contracted to employ all the officers and run the MMAC’s security operations.

That company is Fort Worth, Texas-based DFW Security Protective Force.

In 2022, DFW Security signed a collective bargaining agreement (CBA) promising to pay officers certain overtime amounts, give them yearly raises and even pay them on snow days when the facility is closed, among many other things.

But Rattler-Bryceland and Hampton say those ended up being empty promises.

“You can pick over half of the CBA to look at, and they would be violating it,” Rattler-Bryceland said. “Since 2022, there’s an approximately $150,000 in underpayments to the employees.”

The union documented the violations, filing dozens of payroll discrepancy forms with DFW, but nothing changed.

So they took the matter to federal court.

A judge ruled that DFW had violated the union’s CBA and underpaid officers, also violating the Fair Labor Standards Act.

Last year, an arbitrator ordered DFW to pay the officers back for all the snow days they went unpaid.

“And that award is in the amount of over $45,000,” Hampton said.

But despite that court ruling, the officers say DFW never paid.

“They ignore everything,” Hampton said. “They do not respond to anything.”

“No one knows where that money is,” Rattler-Bryceland said.

On Friday, UGA Local 100 filed a new lawsuit asking federal courts to enforce the repayment agreement.

The union has also filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Labor, which is investigating.

“We have talked about doing a strike meeting,” Rattler-Bryceland said. “We have a pay increase coming April 1st, and the guard force and some management have stated that they are worried that the company is going to ignore that part of the CBA as well.”

She said they hate things have gotten this far.

“We don’t want to put that difficulty on the FAA,” Rattler-Bryceland said. “We don’t want to put the FAA at risk.”

In fact, she cannot believe things could have ever possibly gotten this far.

“It raises the question on a daily basis, we ask ourselves, who’s going to finally hold this company liable?” Rattler-Bryceland said. “Who’s going to hold their feet to the fire to follow federal regulations? Who’s going to?”

News 4 has made multiple attempts to hear from DFW Security, but no one has responded.