Will TSA Unionization Jeopardize Air Safety?
I don’t know about you, but when I see a slow, rude Transportation Security Administration agent going through granny’s purse at airport security, I think to myself: “What the TSA needs is more bureaucracy — if only they were unionized!”
Well, we might get our wish.
While the TSA was created in 2001 with legislation excluding its workers from union-rights regulations granted to other federal employees, the administrator does have the authority to allow for some collective bargaining. Current TSA chief John Pistole has decided to do just that, giving some 40,000 TSA screeners collective bargaining rights on “non-security employment issues,” such as shift scheduling and vacation time.
Yet some lawmakers are worried that even partial unionization will result in a more sclerotic institution that will jeopardize air-travel security. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, wrote pointedly to Pistole, “I am concerned that due to your change in policy, TSA may need union approval to sign off on critical and swift adjustments to airport security protocols.”
The concern is not a trivial one. The dangers of public employee unions — whose strikes and work stoppages have the capacity to imperil the average citizens who depend on their services — have long been debated.
In 1937, Franklin Roosevelt, otherwise a storied hero of the labor movement, warned, “The process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service” — because a “strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to obstruct the operations of government until their demands are satisfied. Such action looking toward the paralysis of government by those who have sworn to support it is unthinkable and intolerable.”
Unthinkable and intolerable — that’s exactly what Ronald Reagan thought when he fired the 11,000 air traffic controllers engaging in a dangerous and illegal strike in 1981.
For his part, Pistole assures lawmakers that he “won’t allow anything to happen that will adversely affect security,” and even says he would follow Reagan’s example and consider firing TSA workers who overstepped their bounds. Pistole points out that his decision does nothing to alter current regulations against work stoppages. But some are afraid even a little taste of unionization will encourage a hunger for more — more compensation, more benefits, more time off, more authority to say “no” to the employer.
Certainly, that is the history of labor unions, who have never settled for just a little power. While noting that Pistole’s decision places strict limits on what TSA agents may collectively bargain for, Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala) rightly asks: “How do we know that won’t be expanded at some point in the future to include many other items?”
Back in 2001, some wondered if the creation of a vast new government agency, the Department of Homeland Security, and yet another sprawling security bureaucracy, the TSA, was really the answer to America’s security issues. After all, the national defense and intelligence communities are already comprised of dozens of agencies notoriously poor at communicating with each other and amongst themselves. And none of them prevented the September 11 attacks. Now, the door has been opened to make the TSA as lazy and unresponsive as other unionized federal employees, like those in the Post Office.
From March 9th to April 19th, the American Federation of Government Employees and the National Treasury Employees Union will compete in an election for the right to represent TSA workers. A loss for both would be a tremendous win for America’s weary air travelers.
Let’s keep our fingers crossed.
The whole issue is absurd. Of minimal use and effectiveness, TSA can’t find their rear ends with a map and a flashlight. Too bad they won’t follow the example of the Wisconsin State Senators and just get out of the damned way.
That IS a rhetorical question.
Mr. Patterson: The TSA affords us no security. It’s there for government officials to play CYA. So, if it affords us no security, then, whether unionized or not, our security level will remain as it was (at nada).
All manner of bad and unethical behavior by TSA agents just became ‘moot’ and company approved.
Well, is the President tying to make flying so unpleasant, that people will forego this method of transportation? I have considered driving to Canada to take international flights.
Just imagine the TSA stealing from your luggage and pawing your personals, and Never being able to be fired?
If I thought TSA kabuki theater was doing anything to really secure travel I’d be a lot more concerned.
“Will TSA Unionization Jeopardize Air Safety?”
Yes…..
This is the dumbest idea yet when it comes to the TSA. they are them most inept unprofessional idiots money could buy and you want to give them protection from the public that they are abusing on a daily basis.
Seriously you can’t be serious. If the wants through they will go through and the TSA will be too busy checking out the coffee shop or the buxom blond in the scanner. In fact with Obama at the helm he may even escort them along with Napolitano at their side as they both hate America
They have yet to catch a single so-called “terrorist” and never will unless the “need” arises for political considerations(for not so obvious but historically valid reasons). As Clauswitz so wrote, “War is an extension of politics by other means”, so when politics demands it, terror arrives as needed.
Unionized or not, using “air safety” and the T.S.A. in the same sentence is a contradiction in terms. Their mere presence, let alone their actions, is simply to further psychologically condition the Empires “subjects” to the omnipresence of the evolving “Police State” that now dominates our lives.
Remember, only a complete fool would utter such nonsense as “They hate us because of our freedoms”, the same sort of damned fool who set up the T.S.A. and “Fatherland”, er, “Homeland Security.”
Have a nice day.
The TSA doesn’t need to be unionized. It needs to be disbanded. Period.
I don’t know about “safety,” but I’ll bet the first time the union has some greedy, self-serving demand that it uses “job action” (read; union extortion) to achieve, the public’s interest will suffer.
This is one case where I think Union membership will have no impact. Current TSA procedures have no impact on our safety anyway.
Can anyone come up with an example where unionization made the organization more professional? Exactly.
d(^_^)b
http://libertyatstake.blogspot.com
“Because the Only Good Progressive is a Failed Progressive”
No public employees should be permitted to have unions. They are protected by Civil Service regulations. to quote FDR again:
‘In 1937, Franklin Roosevelt, otherwise a storied hero of the labor movement, warned, “The process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service” — because a “strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to obstruct the operations of government until their demands are satisfied. Such action looking toward the paralysis of government by those who have sworn to support it is unthinkable and intolerable.’
How much more union dues will be laundered through the TSA’s union of choice to the Democrat party? That is the real travesty of their unionization.
The decrease in air safety caused by the unionization of the TSA will be only a small part of the overall decrease caused by the creation and imposition of the TSA.
Name me one thing our government does efficiently. We have been at war for 10 years in Afghanistan and have not found Bin laden or defeated the Taliban. Not because of our military personal, but because of our political leaders not allowing our military personal to do their job. Just like Vietnam and you expect the TSA to work. They have already caught TSA employees stealing from barges and handing out x-ray`s of some people, give the American people a break.Now the politicians have figured out a way to destroy our military, with allowing gay`s to openly serve.
I’ll bet they are trying to unionize the military.
That’s what has allowed them to gain a measure of control over the police, a constituency that in a natural state is probably about 95% conservative.
The military is even more naturally conservative.
I’m sure they are trying. However, it’s currently illegal.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/10/usc_sec_10_00000976—-000-.html
TSA is nothing more than a jobs program for the chronically unemployed.