ATLANTA — It seemed impossible, at a time when fingernail clippers were being confiscated by the hundreds at American airports, that a man could slip past a checkpoint at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago with a bag of knives, mace and other weapons.
But security experts in the aviation industry were not surprised to learn that the workers running the scanners at that United Airlines terminal a week ago were employed by Argenbright Security Inc., the nation's largest and most frequently criticized airport-security company. The incident in Chicago only added to the long list of security breaches involving the company and led Friday to change at the top.
The firm's parent company, Securicor, announced that it has replaced founder and chief executive Frank Argenbright Jr. as it seeks to regain the trust of passengers and airlines. David Beaton, an executive with Securicor, which bought the Atlanta-based company in January, was named chief executive.
Argenbright has come to dominate the industry in the past 20 years with a corps of 6,000 checkpoint screeners, almost all of whom make little more than minimum wage and receive no health benefits or sick days. Its lapses and high turnover have become the principal argument of those in Congress who want to federalize airport security.
Because of the Chicago incident, Utah officials too reissued their call for federalizing aviation screening and security, since Argenbright also contracts with Utah's busiest air carrier — Delta Air Lines — in Terminal 2 at Salt Lake International Airport. Salt Lake Mayor Rocky Anderson has been working with the U.S. Conference of Mayors on the federalization issue. When Delta corporate spokeswoman Peggy Estes from Atlanta was asked if the airline had ever had any problems with the security firm in Utah or elsewhere in the country, she said she could not answer "for security reasons."
Argenbright — which has 40 percent of the nation's airport security business — has been an aggressive competitor in the battle to get security contracts with major airlines, rising from a small polygraph operation in 1979 to a diverse corporation extending far beyond the security industry. Its security operation alone sold for $185 million last year, and its revenues at just one airport, in Philadelphia, were $6 million in 1998, according to legal documents.
But as the airlines sought to cut costs and award security contracts to the lowest bidder, screening companies began what many in the industry call a race to the bottom, hiring employees at the lowest possible wage and cutting corners to keep checkpoints staffed, with turnover approaching 400 percent a year in some airports.
Argenbright's rise has been accompanied by federal convictions on conspiracy to avoid performing background checks for employees in Philadelphia last year, a jail term for one company supervisor and probation for the company in Pennsylvania and Illinois. A judge ruled the company illegally tried to dismiss employees after they went on strike to protest low wages and benefits.
"The corporation couldn't have been blind to what was going on in places like Philadelphia," said Billie Vincent, the director of civil aviation security at the Federal Aviation Administration in the 1980s and now president of an airline consulting firm in Virginia. "The system in effect forced them into dishonest activity and made it impossible to do the job without cutting corners."
On Sept. 11, two teams of hijackers carrying box cutters passed through Argenbright checkpoints at airports in Washington and Newark, and at two other companies' checkpoints in Boston. Repeated security violations also led to the company's departure from Detroit Metropolitan Airport.
And the federal government said a few weeks ago that even after Argenbright agreed to conduct better background checks on its workers, it continued to hire them by the hundreds without adequately examining their pasts. Attorney General John Ashcroft accused the company of committing "an astonishing pattern of crimes that could have directly jeopardized public safety" at 13 of the nation's largest airports where it screens passengers.
Company officials have said the Justice Department has exaggerated the extent of the background-check problem, although they recently agreed to extend the terms of their probation with the U.S. attorney's office in Philadelphia.
The company — with 19,000 employees — says it is forced to hire large numbers of low-wage screeners quickly because of the high turnover in the jobs and the cost strictures imposed upon by the airlines, which are responsible for security but hire contractors like Argenbright to do the actual work.
"ASI faced certain challenges and had certain initial missteps in the implementation of the program" to correct its problems, wrote John C. Dodds, a lawyer for Argenbright Security Inc., in a letter to federal authorities in August. "However, over the past several months, the company has made substantial progress, which I expect will continue going forward."
He said part of the reason for the company's problems was its acquisition on Dec. 28, 2000, by Securicor, a British security company, which Dodds said had temporarily slowed down its plans for improvement. Argenbright had been a division of AHL Services Inc., which continues as a marketing and customer-fulfillment company for other businesses.
In a statement Friday, the company said it is raising starting hourly salaries by $2, now ranging from $8 to $10 per hour.
In addition, Argenbright said it will ask authorities to allow it not to hire anyone convicted of a felony. Such a step would go further than current Federal Aviation Administration regulations, which exclude only those convicted in the last 10 years for any of two-dozen specified crimes.
"My clear intention is to substantially reshape and restructure the company," Beaton said. The reforms are designed "to ensure that Argenbright meets and exceeds the public's and (Bush) Administration's heightened security expectations."
The company said its training procedures will be patterned after standards Securicor uses in European airports, which are widely considered more secure than their U.S. counterparts.
Beaton said the company also will fingerprint all employees and recheck their backgrounds under a new "zero tolerance" policy. Bill Barbour remains the company's president and chief operating officer. Additional management changes might occur in coming weeks as Beaton assesses the company's operations, Argenbright spokesman Brian Lott said.
Contributing: Associated Press, Deseret News