Transportation Security Administration workers, I know you and I haven’t always seen eye to eye. I call your profession “security theater,” you groped me at JFK, it’s fair to say we’re not the best of friends. But right now, you face an assault on your rights that could radically alter the shape of employment across the United States forever, and you can’t let it stand. The union contract you fought so hard for last year has just been declared null and void by the federal government, unilaterally ignoring the process of collective bargaining you went through. You have to fight this, and to do so you should start ignoring the government’s own rules: Give the Taft-Hartley Act the finger and go on strike.
Last May, the TSA finalized negotiations on a seven-year collective bargaining agreement with the American Federation of Government Employees. The agreement raised salaries by as much as 31 percent, according to the Federal News Network, as well as expanded options for sick leave and grievances. It did what CBAs always do: Made life more livable for workers. Now, with a simple press release, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem wants to undo that work.
Your bosses want to strip away your rights
Biden hamfistedly blowing up negotiations for railway workers was bad enough — it set the precedent that government bosses can override workers’ collective bargaining — but this new move is far worse. No boss should be able to ignore a CBA, but that’s exactly what DHS is doing. If this move is allowed to stand, with what’s left of the National Labor Relations Board, it’ll set an even worse precedent: That CBAs, signed contracts, can be ignored when they’re inconvenient to the bosses.
I may not love the job the TSA does, but as a worker I’ll stand with fellow workers against greedy bosses any day of the week (note: cops do not count as workers, or human beings). Your management has decided to ignore the legal process of collective bargaining, so why should you honor their legal proceedings barring you from striking? TSA workers, you need to remind the Department of Homeland Security who actually does the work around there: You. They’re dressing up this anti-worker move with the language of national security, so why don’t you let them see how secure they feel without anyone there to check bags and IDs?
For the union makes us strong
Really, you’d just be giving Kristi Noem a taste of the TSA within the next few years without a union. Before the CBA, the TSA was already facing worker attrition and having a rough time hiring folks — salaries and benefits simply weren’t worth the work, and other employers were offering better deals. Killing the union has a very real chance of killing the TSA entirely, and the bosses deserve to know what that feels like. Noem is ignoring the law, Trump and Musk are ignoring the law with all these layoffs, why should you have to follow the Taft-Hartley act? Rules shouldn’t bind one party but not another. If they’re null and void on one side, they’re null and void on the other.
I say this as a taxpayer who funds your salaries, one who’s honestly not very happy that I do. But I’d rather pay you to grab my balls every time I fly out for a press trip than live in a world where your domino was allowed to fall, and take further union power with it. Management moves like this rely on your inaction, they expect you to offer no resistance. They forget that the workers, as always, have the power. The formal union process protects them from you, not the other way around. Remind them.
