by Mike Hall, Mar 15, 2007

Earlier this month, after President Bush promised to veto a domestic security bill if the legislation gave bargaining rights to airport screeners, we asked, “What’s more important to President Bush, fighting terrorism or busting unions?”

We’re going to find out pretty soon because on March 13 the U.S. Senate passed the bill by a 60–38 vote, and it carries out most of the recommendations of the bipartisan Sept. 11 commission and includes collective bargaining rights for 43,000 screeners in the Transportation Security Administration (TSA).

The U.S. House version also included bargaining rights and when a House-Senate conference soon crafts a final bill, it too will say airport screeners can bargain for a better life—unless of course Bush chooses union-busting over homeland security by vetoing it.

Says AFGE President John Gage:

For too long, TSOs [screeners] have been deprived of basic worker rights. With this vote, the Senate has voiced its support for TSOs to have the same rights as other federal employees, including those in the Department of Homeland Security.

If it survives, the bill 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 readying to vote on joining AFGE, the Bush administration terminated the screeners’ collective bargaining rights, citing so-called “national security” concerns. Congressional Republicans then blocked several attempts to restore the workers’ rights.

The Senate voted three times to keep the workers’ rights provisions in the bill, including  March 6, when the Senate defeated (51–46) an amendment to the bill that would have removed workers’ freedom to bargain. But the 60–38 final vote still falls short of the two-thirds majority needed to override a veto.

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