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Bush Can’t Take Away Screeners’ Free Speech Rights—Drive for Workers’ Rights Alive and Well |
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Last week, the fight by the nation’s airport screeners to win a voice at work took a step forward. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit reversed a lower court’s ruling that the court had no jurisdiction to hear a suit, brought by AFGE, challenging on First Amendment grounds the termination of a Transportation Security Administration (TSA) airport screener for pro-union activities.
The appellate court also reversed the lower court’s ruling that AFGE had no standing to sue on behalf of the worker—a vocal union activist in Oakland, Calif., who had communicated his complaint about baggage screening practices to the union. Six days later he was fired.
In 2003, the Bush administration terminated the collective bargaining rights of some 43,000 TSA screeners over alleged “national security” concerns. At the time, screeners at several airports were organizing with AFGE.
The Court of Appeals, in its ruling, said:
the fact that the TSA has banned collective bargaining does not mean that a union…has no meaningful function; nor does it mean that the TSA has free reign to retaliate against screeners who speak in favor of collective bargaining rights.
In other words, says Sharon Pinnock, AFGE’s director of membership and organization:
TSA can’t take away their right to free speech.
Congress has voted several times to restore the workers’ rights, but Bush administration veto threats have derailed their efforts.
After the ruling was announced, we thought it would be a good time to check with Pinnock and get an update where the fight for the workers, known as Transportation Security Officers (TSOs), stands.
While the Bush administration says the workers have no collective bargaining rights, it doesn’t mean they can’t join a union and Pinnock says some 5,000 screeners in two dozen airports have signed up. In addition, the union has helped about 1,000 TSOs appeal suspensions and terminations or pursue Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) complaints about race, age or disability discrimination.
We’ve got an EEO hotline and health and safety experts, lawyers, organizers, national reps handling dozen of these calls a day.
When an AFGE screener does reach out for help, the union provides information, proper documents and forms and sometimes can represent him or her in hearings. With the union’s help, the workers have won some big cases, including 20 TSOs in Orlando, Fla., who were terminated or proposed for termination but won their jobs back, as did screeners at airports in Atlanta, San Diego, New York and Des Moines, Iowa.
Pinnock says in the Oakland case and at other airports where workers have been fired for their pro-union views, there as been a chilling effect, but
We can now renew the campaign with fresh zeal and say to these TSOs that the higher courts have affirmed your First Amendment right to be involved in joining and assisting the union.
The TSOs’ fight has won international support. Earlier this year, in a case brought by AFGE and the AFL-CIO, the International Labor Organization (ILO) Committee on Freedom of Association held that airport screeners could not be denied the right to form and join unions and engage in collective bargaining, in the name of “national security.”
The battle by airport screeners to join AFGE is a major component of the nationwide drive to restore workers’ freedom to forms unions and bargain collectively. Workers, unions and allies are fighting to win passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, are mobilizing to build support for the RESPECT Act that will protect as many as 8 million workers from losing their right to join a union because of several 2006 National Labor Relations Board decisions and are leading state level drives to guarantee public employees the right form unions.
For more information, click here, and to read the Appeals Court ruling, click here.
2 Comments
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Bush doesnt make laws. Congress makes laws. This is a Bush Bash site and that’s all it is. This next election is not about Bush. Lets see what is most important to this country, National Security. With out National Security there wont be any jobs, whether were Union or not.
In response to Snuffyg, yes Bush does not make laws. He just breaks them! The real threat to so called National Security comes from Bush and his cronies who have profited heavily from the so-called war on terror!
Our Constitution, our environmental protection laws, our right to organize, our right to safe job environments are all under attack by Bush. This is the REAL threat to our security!