After All These Years, Still Divided on TSA Unionization

By Charles S. Clark

Back in 2002, Democratic Sen. Max Cleland battled GOP challenger Saxby Chambliss bitterly over the collective bargaining question in an age of heightened terrorist threats. Now that the Transportation Security Administration has just granted limited collective bargaining rights to its 40,000 airport screeners, neither of the erstwhile opponents appears interested in revisiting the controversy.

Chambliss, who defeated the Vietnam veteran Cleland in a campaign marked by TV ads featuring menacing photos of Osama bin Laden and charges of weakness in protecting the homeland, would give only one-word answers on Tuesday to two questions from Government Executive. Does he still oppose unionization at TSA? (yes); and has he changed his views since the hard-fought 2002 race ? (No.)

Cleland, who is now secretary of the Arlington, Va.-based American Battle Monuments Commission, declined comment but referred a questioner to the record of the 2002 campaign.

In his 2009 memoir Heart of a Patriot, Cleland recalled how he worked with Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman, then a Democrat, on the Governmental Affairs Committee to press a bill to create a new Homeland Security Department, a move initially opposed by the Bush administration. The original bill included all of the basic protections for employees that other federal workers receive, he wrote. But then the Bush team embraced the new DHS, and suddenly there was legislative language providing that "all the rights normally accorded federal employees, particularly union membership, were denied to employees of the new agency. It was preposterous."