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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowThe Department of Homeland Security said Friday that it is ending the collective bargaining agreement with the tens of thousands of frontline employees at the Transportation Security Administration.
The department, in a statement announcing the termination, criticized the union whose staffers are responsible for keeping weapons off of airplanes and protecting air travel. The department said that poor performers were being allowed to stay on the job and that the agreement was hindering the ability of the organization “to safeguard our transportation systems and keep Americans safe”—an assessment that faced immediate pushback from a top Democrat in Congress.
“This action will ensure Americans will have a more effective and modernized workforces across the nation’s transportation networks,” the agency said in a statement. “TSA is renewing its commitment to providing a quick and secure travel process for Americans.”
The TSA has about 50,000 staffers—called transportation safety officers—who are the ones responsible for staffing airports around the country and checking to make sure that hundreds of thousands of passengers a day do not carry any weapons or explosives into the secure areas of airports.
The decision to end the collective bargaining agreement comes after President Donald Trump’s administration pushed out TSA Administrator David Pekoske the day the Republican president was sworn into office. The agency does not currently have an administrator or a deputy administrator.
The end of the collective bargaining agreement was immediately slammed by the top Democrat on the Homeland Security committee in Congress, Rep. Bennie G. Thompson of Mississippi, who praised the work of TSA staffers in protecting air travel.
“Attempting to negate their legally binding collective bargaining agreement now makes zero sense—it will only reduce morale and hamper the workforce,” Thompson said. “Since the Biden Administration provided pay increases and a new collective bargaining contract to the workforce, TSA’s attrition rates have plummeted.”
Thompson also criticized the Homeland Security press release, saying the department was using “flat out wrong anti-union talking points.” He said the real aim was “diminishing” the workforce so “they can transform it in the mold of Project 2025.”
Project 2025 was the conservative governing blueprint that Trump insisted during the 2024 campaign was not part of his agenda. Project 2025 calls for immediately ending the TSA union and eventually privatizing the entire agency.
The union said it would have a statement soon.
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No problem! As Alfred E. Neuman always asked, “What, me worry?”
Privatize it and direct a sweet government contract to a Trump crony who likely isn’t qualified to provide the service, who employs a bunch of cheap unqualified workers who are banned from unionizing to save money.
Bet they double the cost of PreCheck while they’re at it.
There. I made it make sense.
While we’re at it, time to privatize the USPS.
Amazon, UPS, and Fedx have all three perfected how to make things work. TSA could do the same if run like a business, not an entitlement program.
None of those organizations are mandated to deliver every package or letter everywhere for a price fixed by the government.
It’s apples and oranges.
Yeah, we could bring in as Postmaster General someone from a competitor in private industry, someone with absolutely no experience in the USPS. We could turn him loose to make the changes he thought best.
Oh wait, we did that. Our current PMG is such a person…Mr. DeJoy. And we’ve seen what’s become of the Post Office since he took office. Have a package coming to or from Indy? give it an extra week or two…his new facility in Indy can’t handle the volume…
A TSA employee working at a small regional airport in a northern plains state once told me he and many of his co-workers were planning to leave. I asked why, and his response was something like: no other job in the civilian world requires you to look at an x-ray screen, see something you don’t recognize, and then open up the package, which could contain either a bomb or just something harmless. Lots of stress. And lots of obnoxious people coming through security. That was before the Biden raises.
Let’s see what happens when Trusk and Mumps and their MAGAts and MUSKrats cause a significant reduction in staffing, and new, lower wages. It’s bad enough some days at the airport; I’m sure fewer employees with lower morale will only make it a better experience.