TSA Workers Ratify First Union Contract

[Omaha Steve]

Source: Yahoo News

WASHINGTON -- Workers at the Transportation Security Administration made history today when they voted to ratify the first-ever collective bargaining agreement at the agency. The agreement between the American Federation of Government Employees and TSA was ratified with a vote of 17,326-1,774.

"AFGE is proud that TSA workers finally have a union contract that will improve their working lives and bring stability to the workforce," said AFGE National President J. David Cox.

"This agreement will mean better working conditions, fair evaluation practices and safer workplaces, and in doing so, it will improve morale. This is important because low morale leads to unsafe levels of attrition in an agency where a stable, professional workforce of career employees is vital to its national security mission.

"This union contract is eleven years in the making. AFGE was told from the start that there would never be a union at TSA, that there would never be a collective bargaining agreement. And AFGE's response was always the same: These dedicated frontline employees deserve better," Cox said. Through every battle, every testimony on the Hill, every meeting with management, every union event, every sleepless night, and every rally AFGE and these TSA officers never lost focus on making this contract a reality."

FULL story at link.


Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/tsa-workers-ratify-first-union-contract-155400703.html

[BumRushDaShow]

1. K&R

A LOOOONNNGGGG time coming!

[Fire Walk With Me]

2. All that means is that they'll sing "Look for the Union label" while they cavity search you.

[Major Nikon]

3. It means a lot more than that

Besides all the other benefits that union representation provides the employees themselves, it means that employees can start to participate in their own management which creates a more professional workforce. The benefits of this will extend beyond the employees themselves and ultimately to the flying public.

It's also hugely symbolic because it means that the trend of forcing people to work without collective bargaining agreements is starting to turn.

[Fire Walk With Me]

4. Um, they're the enemy, you know that, right? DHS, TSA, enemies of freedom and liberty.

They've begun using TSA on buses in Texas and their unfortunate influence is spreading like plague.

I happened to have liked the 4th Amendment. While it was still around.

[Major Nikon]

5. How is that the fault of the employees themselves?

Some of these people could be your neighbors. They put their pants on one leg at a time. They brush their teeth. They go to work. They do what they are told. Just like every other slob that works for wages in this country, except they had a right denied to them almost every other wage earner in this country has, which is the right to collectively bargain. Now they have that right restored. I don't know about you, but I see this as a grand thing and a reversal of something that's long overdue.

[Fire Walk With Me]

10. I had a flatmate who was a TSA employee. I never discussed it with him.

The organization is a power grab, and it is spreading. Celebrating that in any way is just weird to me.

[Major Nikon]

13. Would you also blame Wal-Mart employees for corporate abuses?

[Fire Walk With Me]

16. No; I strongly support the unionization of Walmart workers. I've marched in support myself.

However, apples and oranges. Both organizations are repressive and intrusive and unConstitutional, but one is part of a larger power grab and must be dissolved. The other is the result of a power grab due to lack of checks and balances in captalism, a different power grab, which is far more easily eliminated through boycott.

[Major Nikon]

17. You still haven't explained what this has to do with the workers

You realize you can simultaneously advocate for dissolving TSA while still supporting those workers' right to collective bargaining, yes?

[Fire Walk With Me]

18. I wish the economy were better so I could chide them all to take jobs with agencies uninterested in

stealing our Constitutional rights, is all. To me it's like directly supporting the destruction of America/freedom. With Walmart, unionization stands a chance to significantly change the way the company works, hurting it terribly as it is a notorious cost-cutter/Pinkerton response model. A unionized TSA will not slow down its expansion into buses, trains, perhaps even the streets themselves ala' stop and frisk, or via drones. It is expansive and I cannot support its expanse whatsoever.

People have fallen hook, line, and sinker for this "9/11! 9/11! TERRA!" propaganda. Those who give up essential liberties for (promised, false) comfort...

[Major Nikon]

19. I understand all you are saying

But I just don't see how advocating for TSA workers and advocating against TSA are mutually exclusive. Even if I were to give you a magic wand you could wave and make TSA disappear tomorrow, the job of airport security screener isn't going away and unions tend to follow employees, not organizations. One more union employee means one less person who is a total slave to their employer. I see that as a good thing.

[Proles]

8. I wouldn't consider them the enemy, per se. And accusing the DHS as the "enemy of freedom

and liberty" is kind of a sweeping statement. FEMA is under the DHS, are they enemies? Not to mention Coast Guard and Secret Service.

I'm not philosophically in agreement with everything TSA does, but we can't ignore the fact that security screeners are a necessity at airports nowadays. May as well treat them like dignified employees. Maybe in the process they won't be as cranky...

[Fire Walk With Me]

11. I'm in Occupy and FOI requests reveal that DHS has been "watching" us since day 1,

as well as being involved with co-ordination of camp clearings and continuing "observation".

In LA, the police have Special Order 11, which makes them a tentacle of the DHS. They even have nifty "see something, say something" business cards. Know for a fact that any and all protesters have all their information in those damn fusion centers, that we all have files at various levels. For expressing our 1st Amendment rights. Then the NDAA comes along with indefinite detention without trial or representation for any accused or believed to be involved with or in contact with "terrorists". Then HR347. Then Obama sends lawyers to strike down a ruling that the indefinite detention clause (Section 1021) is unConstitutional. Obama fought to keep something a judge threw out as unConstitutional.

Representative Peter King, who was once actually a bag man for the IRA, who was involved with overseeing the DHS, had this to say (among several choice quotes) about Occupy:



There is of course the video where he calls us losers, living in our own urine (or similar) etc. Very kind of someone working with a domestic spying agency to say.

"We can't allow that." Note that Jean Quan, "mayor" of Oakland, let slip that 18 mayors conference-called about getting rid of Occupy. DHS were involved.

740+ Occupiers have been arrested for using their 1st Amendment rights, many of them having been outright bloodied by police in the process. Obama called upon the Egyptian authorities to respect the rights of Egyptian citizens to protest, but has said not one word about what is being done to us. I take such silence, well after a years' time, to be true complicity. Because on the flip side of this coin, zero fraudulent, thieving bankers have been arrested and charged. Zero. 7400+ 1st Amendment protesters versus zero fraudulent, thieving criminals who nearly put us into the 2nd Great Depression.

I deeply resent that I am considered a terrorist or potential terrorist for utilizing my Constitutional Rights. That my friends are, that we all are. This speaks of a government which is out-of-control and paranoid and set upon creating new enemies to further justify the permanent war budget and to help arms dealers expand their profits through sales within the US against the terrible new (and never found) enemy. It screams of fear-mongering and power grabs, of back-room deals and hideous profits at the expense of our freedom. 64 drone bases inside the US, and growing. Police beginning to use drones to spy upon citizens. And now the FBI are breaking into homes, searching for "literature", taking people into political custody, using grand juries to attempt to end the freedom of those targeted...which they did to other civil rights movements across the decades.

All of these things, and more, taken together, tell me that yes, DHS and associated "agencies" are quite the enemy. Especially to the Constitution.

More info:

No NATO protester pleas to terrorism

http://www.democraticunderground.com/12524228


3 Occupy Wall Street Protesters Win $50K Settlement Over "Thought Crime" Arrest

http://www.democraticunderground.com/12524252


Another activist subpoenaed to Pacific NW Grand Jury.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/12524091

[Booster]

6. I totally agree. IMO unions are what created the middle class and unions will bring them back.

Corporations like Walmart has shown us how much they care about their own employees and that's an ugly picture. Recently, employees at Walmart went on strike and THEY WON. They aren't unionized yet, but I have a feeling it's coming, and that will be a day for all of us to celebrate. I do believe the pendulum is swinging back and unions will rise up again.

[Hekate]

7. This is GOOD

One of the many, many things wrong with the way TSA was formed was that the employees were not allowed to form a union. Another egregious wrong was that they were not ever to be civil service employees, but instead yet another privatized for-profit enterprise paid for by you and me.

Thus was created a lowest common denominator workforce thrown into the fray with inadequate training, insufficient worker protections (I know I am uneasy about getting close to their x-ray machines, but they stand next to them all day long, day after day, and I doubt they are adequately protected), and initially at least a staggering turnover.

These workers are our fellow citizens and neighbors, and whatever my feelings about the TSA at least I know where to lay most of the blame. Being able to form a union is a giant step in the right direction.

Hekate

[DeSwiss]

9. Fuck the TSA and all who ride upon her. n/t

[grantcart]

12. I'm in this field and hadn't heard about it. Thanks Steve.

[Earth_First]

14. Right on! Unionized jackbooted thuggery!

USA! USA! USA!

[Major Nikon]

15. Makes about as much sense as calling a mall cop a jack booted thug

Actually less because TSA screeners aren't cops at all, in any sense of the word.

[Wernothelpless]

20. First order of business ...

Did Airport Scanners Give Boston TSA Agents Cancer? ....

Read more: http://healthland.time.com/2011/06/30/did-airport-scanners-give-boston-tsa-agents-cancer/#ixzz2Bqz7obLJ

AND ...

“Skin cancers are a particular concern, because the low-energy X-rays used in these scanners deposit a significant fraction of their total dose in the skin,” he said. “In general, children are more sensitive than adults to radiation, and that’s true for the endpoint of radiation-related skin cancer too.”

http://www.wnd.com/2010/11/231837/

[Major Nikon]

21. You might want to rethink that 2nd link

While both these articles are basically talking about the same thing, what they lead you to believe is vastly different.

Your first link is from Time, which is a mainstream news source with mainstream standards for journalism.

The first link clearly states they are talking about TSA agents. The second link seems to be inclusive of anyone who gets within a few yards of an X-ray machine.

The second link is from the Worldnutdaily and the author also happened to write the brilliant piece of American literature entitled....Where's the REAL Birth Certificate?

I'm just not sure how this helps.

[Wernothelpless]

25. My concern is TSA workers exposed to radiation and cancer ....

How interesting for you that you need to vent about some off topic subject you are desperate to talk about ...

If you're not concerned about TSA agents and radiation exposure there's no need to change the subject and comment on "real birth certificate" however important that may be to you ...

I'm sure you wanted to draw attention to yourself in some meaningless way, but for me it's an odd choice ... There are honest hard-working people who may develop cancer ... innocent travelers and children too ... and you choose to inject what? ...

Good for you, dear ... Bravo! ... sheesh ...

[Major Nikon]

26. 'concerned' folks who pander in right wing propaganda is nothing new around here

Whether you realize it or not, I was actually doing you a big favor (which won't happen again I can assure you). I could have alerted on it and I'm pretty sure if I did, POOF! Your post would be gone forever and it would have been far less effort on my part.

Wingnut propaganda doesn't fly here. If you want to spew bullshit from sources like Worldnutdaily, be my guest. However, I suspect if you do so your tenure here will be short lived, especially since you seem to be so protective of said source which is quite telling.

Suggesting that because I point this out I somehow don't give a shit about TSA workers or children is just about as nutty as your source, BTW.

Cheers!

[Arctic Dave]

22. Sorry, not a fan of the TSA whether they are union or not.

Putting a paint job on a piece of shit doesn't change what it is.

[libdem4life]

23. Excellent. The argument sounds like blaming veterans for the war thus withholding benefits .

This isn't the 1960s, thankfully.

[Omaha Steve]

24. Great analogy

Why DUers are blaming these workers I just don't understand.