When the Transportation Security Administration was first established in 2001 as part of the post-9/11 re-alignment that also resulted in the Ministry of Peace Homeland Security Administration, Congress expressly included a rule that TSA screeners could not be unionized. That rule is currently being challenged by the now Democrat-led Congress.
The reasoning against unionization was wholly sensible:
Screeners need to adapt to changing threats, often with random and unpredictable methods. Union rules would require negotiating over these methods with labor chiefs at each work site, meaning at every airport. By TSA’s estimate, union rules would also require pulling some 8% of the work force offline to meet new management demands.(Source 1; Source 2.)
I’ll buy all that, but here’s my follow-up question:
Is the distinction between TSA screeners and — well, every other non-managerial employee — truly so stark that this reasoning should not be extended? Don’t police officers (who are unionized) or the Border Patrol (who are both unionized and part of Homeland Security) need to “adapt to changing threats, often with random and unpredictable methods”? Or firefighters? Or EMTs?
Now replace “changing threats” with “changing circumstances, demographics, and environments.” Suddenly teachers seem to qualify — don’t they need to adapt as well? Isn’t education “urgent”? Don’t teacher unions impose too great an obstacle to making sure that what needs to be done in the schools is actually done?
Now go back to “changing threats,” but insert the adjective “competitive.” Shouldn’t a “changing competitive threat” (i.e., from overseas) warrant limits on, e.g., auto worker unionization? Is the collapse of, for example, the automotive sector, which was proximately caused by the union-imposed strangulation of workplace rules, really less “urgent” a threat that some hypothetical “new terror threat”? Is bringing down an entire industry not worse than bringing down a single airplane?
Every business, every industry, every sector needs to adapt — airport screeners are in no way unique in this. Unions slow down or even preclude change. Except of course for the one “threat” that, to put it mildly, no union ever prevented: bankruptcy.
Labor unions were, at best, a Twentieth-Century solution to a Nineteenth-Century problem. They have no place, none whatsoever, in the Twenty-First Century.
3 responses so far ↓
Link Andrew Cory // Mar 6, 2007 at 3:18 pm
To recap: Airline security is as bad as it was pre-9/11, and you think that allowing unions to form would make things worse? Sir, I believe you simply favor capital over labor…
Link doinkicarus // Mar 7, 2007 at 8:57 am
I've always found it funny that government agencies feel the need to unionize. After all, aren't unions there to protect us from big, bad corporations? The government isn't a big, bad…
oh. nevermind.
Link Clarica // Mar 8, 2007 at 7:26 am
TSO's often say, "Can they [management] do that?" My observation, as a supervisor with TSA, is that they can – but they shouldn't – because they do not have a union to keep management straight.