Maybe now they’ll stop harassing grandmas. On March 7, the Department of Homeland Security, headed by Secretary Kristi Noem, canceled its seven-year, May 2024 collective bargaining agreement with American Federation of Government Employees TSA Council 100. The agreement covered 40,000 union workers of the Transportation Security Administration, which the DHS oversees.
In a statement, the DHS accused “a select few poor performers” of violating benefits programs. Nearly 200 TSA officers “work full-time on union matters” instead of serving the public. The end of collective bargaining would remove “bureaucratic hurdles” to greater efficiency. And officers no longer would have their paychecks siphoned to “a union that does not represent them.”
The union’s website charged the action was “a retaliation against AFGE” for challenging “unlawful actions targeting federal workers.” Union Secretary-Treasurer Johnny Jones told the Wall Street Journal the action was against the law.
This represents a partial correction of the mistake of creating the TSA in the first place in the panic after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Until then, almost all passenger screening was by private companies. Today, according to the TSA’s website, only 20 of America’s 440 commercial airports are private and participate in its Screening Partnership Program, including two in California, for Sonoma County and San Francisco International.
Since their creation, the blue shirts too often have engaged in security theater, such as forcing passengers to remove shoes, conducting invasive pat-downs and limiting liquids carried onboard to 3.4 ounces. Last year the United Kingdom installed new Computed Tomography scanners allowing up to 67.6 ounces. But the TSA told Travel + Leisure “it may not be until 2040 that we have CT units fully deployed.” That exemplifies the inefficiency of the agency.
Collective bargaining for TSA employees was a mistake, argues Marc Scribner, senior transportation analyst at the Los Angeles-based Reason Foundation. He said in 2001 Congress and the administration of President George W. Bush promised the TSA wouldn’t be allowed to become “another unaccountable government jobs program. This promise was broken during the Obama administration.”
A key problem, he said, is the TSA both regulates airport security and provides the screening. The two duties ought to be separated, with the TSA providing oversight, but the actual security conducted by private firms or the airports.
Another problem with government unions we have noted in the past is they sit on both sides of the bargaining table: representing the employees as the union, but also working to elect the “employer” – politicians who favor fat union contracts. The taxpayers and passengers are not at that table.
Indeed, last July 13, the National Executive Council of the AFGE, representing 750,000 employees in total, unanimously endorsed Kamala Harris for president, saying its “top priority in 2024 is defeating Donald Trump and stopping anti-worker efforts like Project 2025.”
Although the Trump administration’s action partly is payback, a shift back to private screeners is long overdue. Canceling the union contract is a first step in the meantime.