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Last month, John Pistole, the head of the TSA, gave TSA employees the right to join a union and bargain collectively over a limited set of issues. Despite those limits, this is a huge vote, and one Republicans have tried hard to stop. The Bush administration had banned TSA workers from joining unions, and last month Senate Republicans voted unanimously to stop the unionization vote that began yesterday.
The Washington Post puts this election in another important context:
At a time when basic public employee union activities in state governments are under attack, Uncle Sam is staging what labor leaders say is the largest federal union organizing effort in history.
In contrast to Wisconsin and Ohio, where conservative politicians want to strip labor organizations of certain collective bargaining rights, 44,000 federal transportation security officers will be able to vote to choose a union, or no union, during a six-week period beginning Wednesday.
Two unions, the AFL-CIO-affiliated American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) and the independent National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU), are on the ballot, as is the option of no union. If none of the three options gets a majority, there will be a run-off.
A win on this would be huge, for the union movement and for screeners, who've had to cope with terrible work conditions such as working split shifts—three hours on, four hours off, three hours back at work.
The vote ends April 19th.