Change Due At TSA?

This summer, the Transportation Security Administration began a series of meetings with the American Federation of Government Employees and the National Treasury Employees Union, the two labor organizations that are organizing locals of the agency's workers in the hopes they'll eventually be granted collective bargaining rights. Those conversations were aimed at starting up a relationship that had been non-existent in the previous administration--and the unions have hopes that the conversations, their first opportunity to have substantial impact on behalf of the workers they represent outside a hearing room or a press conference, might produce actual, substantive policy changes in the department. AFGE has a press release out on their second meeting with the agency, and it hints at some of the changes that union is hoping will come about as a result of those conversations. Among them:

-Standardizing disciplinary policies across the regulations laid out by TSA headquarters and the individual airports, so individual airports don't adopt and enforce disciplinary rules arbitrarily, and without headquarters' approval.

-Setting standards for a doctor's note that allows employees to take sick leave.

-Providing a procedure that will explain to TSA officers who applied for promotions but were not selected for them why they were not chosen.