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Senate Upholds TSA Workers’ Rights, But Bush Veto Looms |
In a mostly party-line 51-46 vote, Senate Democrats today upheld a move to restore the collective bargaining rights of some 43,000 Transportation Security Administration (TSA) airport screeners. But the narrow vote means the TSA workers’ bargaining rights aren’t likely to survive Presidents Bush’s expected veto of the bill.
Critics said Bush’s veto pledge last week indicates the president considers it more important to deny the workers their bargaining rights than to enact the anti-terrorist and national security recommendations of the 9/11 commission.
Bush and Republican lawmakers claim national security would be threatened by the so-called “lack of flexibility” of a unionized TSA workforce.
That’s nonsense, says AFGE President John Gage:
The notion that granting bargaining rights to [transportation security officers] would result in a less flexible workforce is just plain nonsense, and it is also an insult to the thousands of dedicated federal workers within Homeland Security, including the Border Patrol, FEMA, Federal Protective Service, and the Army Corps of Engineers. One only need look at 9/11. Unionized workers from both the public and private sector were first on the scene and worked tirelessly to restore what had been. Having union rights did not hamper response time or the ability to do their jobs, but instead it helped prepare them to be ready in case of emergency.
Today’s vote tabled an amendment by Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) to strip provisions from the 9/11 bill (S. 4) that the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee approved last month. In January, the House passed its version of the bill with the collective bargaining rights included. The House vote of 299-128 was well over the two-thirds majority needed to override a presidential veto, but the Senate vote of 51-46 was well short of the 66 needed to override.
The provision Bush and congressional Republicans want to kill would repeal a portion of the 2002 Aviation and Transportation Security Act that gave the Bush administration authority to end bargaining rights for TSA workers.
In 2003, as TSA workers at several airports were getting ready to vote on joining AFGE, the Bush administration, citing so-called “national security” concerns, terminated the screeners’ collective bargaining rights. Congressional Republicans then blocked several attempts to restore the workers’ rights.
Bush’s veto promise comes as no surprise. Since his administration took office, it has attacked the collective bargaining rights of 850,000 Defense Department workers and more than 170,000 Homeland Security Department employees.
Click here, here and here to read more about the administration’s attacks on TSA workers and other federal employees.
Just in case it slipped your mind: In another insult to America’s workers, Bush indicated he also will veto the Employee Free Choice Act that passed the House last week.
2 Comments
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I seriously doubt that this administration will reconsider a veto. It seems to me that since this administration took office, power of corporations are protected; power of unions are suppressed or eliminated. Every worker in the United States should have the right to unionize. No exceptions.
The Republican belief that union workers jeopardize national security illustrates their fear of what Bush described a few years ago as “class war.” They are convinced that the interests of business are synonymous with the interests of the nation and anyone seeking social and economic justice is a threat to the United States. From the point of view of someone whose work in low-paying, unsafe jobs has helped enrich and empower my bosses, I’d say they are the ones waging class war and undermining the stability of our country.