Yesterday I posted this diary,
The straight, white, male, rural, southern party which was well received and improved by the high quality comments (thanks, friends). At the end of that piece, I alluded to this coming one as the "TSA unionization revitalization." We may as well append this to yesterday's work and re-title it
"The non-union, straight, white, male, rural, southern party."
It's no secret that the GOP is wholly anti-union. The story
US should allow airport screeners to unionize -ILO, however, brings it home once again, with a resounding THUD.
Under the orders of President Bush, the workers of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) are not allowed to unionize. But this week, the International Labor Organization (ILO) ruled that they can. Except the Bush Maladministration won't let them.
First, a little history: when the TSA was established, Pseudo-president Bush opposed Democratic efforts to allow TSA workers to unionize, saying, and I remember this clearly, that he "needed the right to hire and fire" to protect our security. The country and the media were acting so butthole stupid at the time that no one bothered to point out to him that law enforcement officers all over the country who protect our security every day in far more direct ways than TSA bargain collectively.
Have any of you actually spoken to a TSA worker? I did, a couple of years ago, while waiting for a flight at a major airport. I knew someone who was considering applying for a TSA job, so when I saw a TSA employee sitting with his coffee, I sat with him and asked if he would mind talking to me about TSA. He was only too happy to do so, and was adamant in warning off anyone who was interested in applying. This was a time when jobs were really, really tight, yet he said TSA workers were leaving in droves and it was all due to abusive working conditions and heinous management. He said he was looking himself, but a lot of the people who had left didn't even bother landing a new job first. They just split.
I mentally filed that conversation away. Then, over the next couple of years, I noticed how many supposed TSA roles were being filled by private security firm employees. When traveling, how many times has your boarding pass been checked by someone who is clearly not TSA? My answer: LOTS.
My guess, based on that two-year-old conversation, was that the TSA worker who should be checking the identity of everyone who boards a plane at an American airport is in the back somewhere covering for the loss of yet another baggage screener. Then on a recent trip, I found out how right I was when I saw this USAToday article: Bonuses don't cut turnover for TSA. Recalling that chance conversation two years before, I read the following:
The TSA began paying 36,000 of its 45,000 screeners "retention bonuses" of $500 or $1,000 each in May. The turnover rate over the summer was unchanged from the winter and spring months, according to the TSA and the federal Office of Personnel Management.
One in five screeners left from Oct. 1, 2005, to Sept. 30.
"It's menial labor," said Michael Boyd, an aviation consultant who advises airports and airlines. "These are people who paw through luggage."
The TSA acknowledges the attrition problem and is taking additional steps. Among more recent efforts to curb turnover is a new pay grade that will raise salaries of high-quality veteran screeners by up to $5,300 and better position them to move into other government-security jobs such as the Secret Service or Border Patrol, according to TSA.
The agency also says it is creating screener jobs with salaries up to $56,700 that will focus on detecting bombs or identifying suspicious passengers. TSA has maintained that screeners with more experience are better at finding weapons at checkpoints.
Such improvements could help upgrade screening -- which pays an average of $30,000 a year -- "from a dead-end job to an occupation where (screeners) can see years of opportunity," said Gale Rossides, a TSA associate administrator.
... snip ...
Rossides said the bonuses and other efforts are improving morale and screener retention. She said TSA data show screeners are less likely to quit now than they were six months ago. But those gains are being offset by a growing number of part-time screeners, who are twice as likely to leave as full-timers.
Then on Wednesday, November 15, came the next installment of this long-running saga in the form of the story on the ILO ruling, linked above:
The International Labor Organization on Wednesday rejected the Bush administration's national security rationale for denying unionization rights to the 56,000 passenger screeners at U.S. airports.
Ruling on a three-year-old complaint by a U.S. government employees' union, the Geneva-based United Nations agency said the government should bargain with a union of the workers' choosing on matters not directly related to national security.
The ILO's Committee on Freedom of Association, which considered the case, said it was "concerned that extension of the notion of national security concerns for persons who are clearly not making national policy that may affect security ... may impede unduly upon the rights of these federal employees."
Union! Union! But wait:
The United States is a member of the ILO, which sets global labor standards, but there is no mechanism to enforce its decisions within any of its member countries.
Following the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, airport screeners, who were previously employed by private contractors, were hired as government employees in the newly created Transportation Security Administration (TSA).
In January 2003, the TSA's administrator cited national security concerns in issuing an order that denied the workers, who screen airport passengers and their baggage, the right to bargain collectively over working conditions.
TSA spokeswoman Ellen Howe said the agency has yet to see the ILO ruling and therefore could not comment on it.
But she said the administrator was authorized to issue the 2003 order, which she said recognizes "the critical national security responsibility of our workforce and that collective bargaining would limit our ability to make decisions rapidly in respect to national security."
"Critical national security responsibility"?? Remember what these folks do:
"It's menial labor," said Michael Boyd, an aviation consultant who advises airports and airlines. "These are people who paw through luggage."
What's "critical" is to have enough TSA staff, something this Maladministration can't accomplish. That could be more easily solved by the simple mechanism of giving TSA hourly staff the same collective bargaining power that hundreds of thousands of law enforcement officers have nationwide, the vaunted "first responders" that Bush adores so much and who do have critical responsibility.
There is only one reason Bush's TSA won't be allowed to unionize: Bush and his cronies know damn good and well they'd create a potential voting block of 40,000 Democrats. Bush's labor record is abysmal, and so extensively abysmal I won't detail it here (I'm sure many others have). But when the Idiot in Chief plays politics with the last, best chance to keep a major bad guy off a plane, that's not just anti-union, that's not just partisan, it's criminally negligent. On balance, why any union member would vote for a party that seeks to destroy his or her best protection against management excess and abuse is one of Life's Great Mysteries.
So there you have it: The GOP loves you if you are the right combination of rural, Southern, rabidly evangelical, straight, male, white, super-wealthy and non-union. The tighter they squeeze, the more slips through their fingers.
When the 110th Congress is sworn in, contact your federal representative and senators and ask them to give the TSA the right to unionize. And copy Joltin' Joe Lieberman, incoming chair of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security. Can't wait to see his take on the issue.