Baggage screener unionization issue still up in the air

During last year's debate in Congress over airport security, most observers seemed to assume one thing: Federalized airport screeners would be card-carrying union members. That was certainly what the opponents of federalization were saying at the time: "What the Democrats are pushing for here is that ... everybody that is screening at the airports must be a federal employee--and thereby a member of the union," remarked House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas.

In the end, of course, the forces for federalization triumphed. After the September 11 terrorist attacks, critics assailed America's private-sector airport screeners, who experienced high job turnover and earned salaries that hovered just above the minimum wage. By federalizing the nation's 30,000 airport screeners, Congress ostensibly created a better-paid and better-trained workforce.

But contrary to conventional wisdom, there are growing concerns that these screeners might not be wearing the union label. To increase the support for the final airport security bill, congressional negotiators didn't mandate many of the screeners' benefits and conditions of employment, such as whether they could unionize or receive whistleblower protection. Instead, the legislation left these matters up to the discretion of Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta.

On March 4, Mineta said that he had not made up his mind about the unionization issue, but his deputy, Michael P. Jackson, told reporters last month that the department is working hard on the matter. "It's a very high priority," Jackson noted.

Judging from the Bush administration's past decisions regarding organized labor, union officials and Democrats on the Hill say they wouldn't be surprised if the Transportation Department ends up prohibiting the unionization of airport screeners. In fact, in his first few months in office, Bush made several decisions that went against organized labor--whose leaders sided with Democrats in the 2000 election. He signed legislation that repealed ergonomics regulations; intervened to halt a mechanics' strike against Northwest Airlines; and issued an executive order making it harder for unions to use their members' dues for political purposes. Lately, though, Bush has showed signs of warming toward some unions. Most notably, he and the Teamsters have worked together on trying to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil exploration, and the Steelworkers have praised the president for imposing tariffs on steel imports.

"Our great concern is that they will find a way to exclude the 30,000 screeners from the right to form a union and bargain collectively," said Beth Moten, the legislative director for the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents approximately 600,000 federal and District of Columbia workers. "And if they do so, it'll be for political reasons."

Mineta's role provides an interesting subplot to this unionization debate. The sole Democrat in the Bush Cabinet, Mineta was a proponent of organized labor during his 20-year tenure as a House member from California. When he agreed to join the Bush administration, he struck a deal with President Bush that allows him to speak his mind on transportation issues privately to the president and within the administration. But Mineta also knows that the president has the final say.

"I am the Secretary of Transportation, but I'm also staff to the President of the United States," he told National Journal in January. "And once the decisions are made, we all salute and carry things out."

Labor advocates have also been upset at the Transportation Department's recent announcement that it would not grant full whistleblower protection to the airport screeners, because of concerns that a whistleblower's actions could potentially compromise sensitive security operations. Mineta, however, said that the department was working on some sort of hybrid protection that would not harm security. "We are going to be tailor-making some kind of whistleblower protection" for this security workforce, he said.

Union leaders argue that denying screeners union rights and full whistleblower protection contradicts the goal of creating a better screening workforce. The lack of these benefits, they say, might make it more difficult to attract and retain screeners, even though they will be earning more money as federal employees. "The workers have fewer rights than they did prior to the bill," said Jono Schaffer, the director of security organizing at the Service Employees International Union. "It's just absurd."

In fact, under the old security system, the SEIU represented about 2,000 screeners--who will no longer be union members if the Transportation Department sides against unionization. "What the administration will have done is take advantage of this law to disenfranchise people who previously had the right to unionize," Moten said.

Edward Wytkind, the executive director of the AFL-CIO's transportation trades department, is more optimistic that Mineta will allow screeners to join a union. "We're working for it, and we expect that workers will be treated with dignity."

But because of the rhetoric and the assumptions about unionization that came from Armey and others during the fight in Congress over airport security, Wytkind says he's surprised that the unionization of screeners is even in doubt. "Everyone finds it kind of bizarre that we would even be debating this," he said.