Trump administration outlaws unions at TSA

The Homeland Security Department announced Friday that it is stripping the Transportation Security Administration workforce’s right to collective bargaining, potentially undoing more than a decade of progress in improving the working conditions of the nation’s airport security screeners.

“Effectively immediately, at the direction of DHS Secretary [Kristi] Noem, TSA is rescinding the 2022 determination granting the ability to engage in collective bargaining, and [the American Federation of Government Employees] is no longer the exclusive representative of any personnel carrying out screening functions,” wrote Adam Stahl, a senior official performing the duties of the TSA administrator in an email to employees obtained by Government Executive. “This decision aligns with the administration’s vision of maximizing government productivity and efficiency and ensuring that our workforce can respond swiftly and effectively to evolving threats.”

TSA workers’ right to be represented by a union has been on shaky ground for years. When Congress first established the agency following the September 11, 2001, terror attack, it granted the agency broad latitude to create its own personnel system, outside of Title 5 of the U.S. Code and the General Schedule pay scale.

The workforce was granted abridged collective bargaining rights in 2011; the Biden administration expanded those rights in 2021 when it moved to administratively apply Title 5, and its accompanying pay system, to the agency. Prior to that decision, which delivered pay raises upwards of 30% to transportation security officers, the agency was plagued by poor morale and employee retention, fueled by poor pay and rampant favoritism.

In a statement, AFGE National President Everett Kelley accused the department of retaliating against the union for its various legal challenges against the administration’s various workforce initiatives in recent weeks and vowed to fight to protect employees’ rights, as well as their seven-year union contract signed last May.

“[Nearly] 47,000 Transportation Security Officers show up at over 400 airports across the country every single day to make sure our skies are safe for air travel,” Kelley said. “[Today], Secretary Noem and the Trump administration have violated these patriotic Americans’ right to join a union in an unprovoked attack. They gave as justification a completely fabricated claim about union officials—making clear this action has nothing to do with efficiency, safety or homeland security. This is merely a pretext for attacking the rights of regular working Americans across the country because they happen to belong to a union.”

A DHS press release announcing the decision claims that union officials working on official time, a practice by which labor leaders are paid their salary for working on representational matters like contract negotiations and representing workers in grievance or disciplinary proceedings, were siphoning too much manpower away from screening activities.

“TSA has more people doing full-time union work than we have performing screening functions at 86% of our airports,” the department wrote. “Of the 432 federalized airports, 374 airports have fewer than 200 TSA officers to perform screening functions. Nearly 200 TSA officers are paid by the government but work full-time on union matters. These people do not retain certification to perform screening functions.”

But in reality, those 200 employees amount to 0.4% of the roughly 46,600 bargaining unit employees at TSA, according to Office of Personnel Management data as of September 2024.

In an FAQ sent to employees and obtained by Government Executive, officials claimed Friday’s decision would not impact the recently implemented pay raises across the agency. And they indicated that they plan to make it harder for a future administration to restore employees’ collective bargaining rights.

“Within 90 days, TSA, in collaboration with the acting general counsel, will consider actions to ensure that no future administration may permit TSOs to elect an exclusive representative or engage in collective bargaining absent an intervening statutory change,” the document states. “This will help increase the flexibility and responsiveness required for TSA to fulfill its mission.”