WASHINGTON—The decision by the Republican Donald Trump regime to immediately end the collective bargaining agreement covering 47,000 Transportation Security Officers—the airport screeners—“puts us all at risk” when we fly, says outspoken Association of Flight Attendants-CWA President Sara Nelson.
First the president and Elon Musk fired air traffic controllers as the over-worked ones remaining on the job presided over growing numbers of fatal accidents. Now Sara Nelson explains that the TSOs whose contract he has cancelled protect air travelers from the threat of attacks in flight and hijackings like the one that killed 3,000 people—including hundreds of union members—on New York and D.C. on Sept. 11, 2001.
That attack led to the law creating the Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration, employer of the safety officers who do the baggage and other checks. Trump wants to hand profits to Wall Street by privatizing the screeners, Nelson said.
While both the screeners’ union, the Government Employees (AFGE), and the AFL-CIO vowed to fight Trump’s contract termination, they face a potential roadblock 2001 law creating the TSA that has a provision letting the president invoke “national security” to ban the screeners from unionizing.
Then-GOP President George W. Bush barred their unionization. Democratic President Barack Obama lifted the ban, and the Government Employees (AFGE) won the subsequent union recognition election.
That union has negotiated their contracts, but can’t bargain over their pay. Now the Trump regime has, in one fell swoop, eliminated the entire contract, which runs through 2031, effective immediately.
“Let’s be clear: This is the beginning, not the end, of the fight for Americans’ fundamental rights to join a union,” declared AFGE President Everett Kelley. Nelson called the contract’s death “an act of retaliation” against unions in general and “an unprecedented attack on workers’ rights.”
Trump Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem—the former South Dakota governor who got in hot political water for shooting her own dog to death—claimed the contract was cancelled to “eliminate the undue influence of AFGE” and because union reps were using official time to protect members.
The reasons were “completely fabricated,” Kelley said—a polite way of saying Noem is lying.
The practical impact of the contract’s termination puts an end to grievance procedures for the TSOs, endangers their benefits, and allows favoritism in hiring, firing and pay raises. It also virtually eliminates union stewards who represent the TSOs when bosses dream up trumped-up reasons for disciplining or firing individual officers.
Noem also charged AFGE “is hindering merit-based performance recognition,” the Republican code words for dividing workers into pay tiers and giving raises to bosses’ favorites. Eliminating the contract could also endanger future pay raises. Until a recent decision by the prior Democratic Biden administration , after AFGE lobbying, the TSOs were the lowest-paid and lowest-morale large workforce in the federal government. Pay for many of the TSOs was below the federal poverty line , until raises of up to 31% following that decision and bargaining.
AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler also denounced Trump’s termination of the contract.
Dangerous and “union-busting” move
“Canceling the collective bargaining agreement between TSA and its security officer workforce is dangerous union-busting ripped from the pages of Project 2025 that leaves the 47,000 officers who protect us without a voice,” she said. Project 2025 is the GOP platform, crafted by the radical right Heritage Foundation, which Trump ran on.
“Through a union, TSA officers are empowered to improve work conditions and make air travel safer for passengers. With this sweeping, illegal directive, the Trump administration is retaliating against unions for challenging its unlawful Department of Government Efficiency actions against America’s federal workers in court.”
Shuler called eliminating the TSOs’ contract a “dangerous and ill-conceived. action.” The federation, along with AFGE “will fight every step of the way to ensure TSA officers continue to stand together in a union to provide the vital services Americans depend on.”
Noem’s March 7 cancellation of the TSO officers’ collective bargaining agreement, which runs through July 2031, is the latest—and, so far, largest axing of a group of federal workers that Trump and his handler multibillionaire Elon Musk and his so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” have carried out.
Also on the chopping block: Musk-Trump plans to cut 83,000 workers from the Department of Veterans Affairs and up to 50% of the workforce at the Social Security Administration. AFGE is the largest union at both agencies. National Nurses United represents VA registered nurses.
The Social Security workforce cut has already drawn outrage. It also continues a 90-year tradition of Republican hatred of Social Security, along with hatred of other spending that helps benefit workers and poor people as opposed to only helping the rich.
“Donald Trump and Elon Musk aren’t real people. They don’t know real people. They misunderstand the importance of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid,” Alex Lawson, executive director of Social Security Works, told the Progressive Democrats of America on March 9. “That’s the wrecking ball of DOGE right now,” he said of Musk’s so-called “Department of Government Efficiency.”
“If your check doesn’t come and there’s no one or no office to call”—because Musk plans to eliminate all Social Security local offices—“and you’re facing a benefit impact, you’ll have to call your congressmember.”
The “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.,” said AFGE’s Kelley. “Many are veterans” who now wear “a second uniform protecting the country.”
“Noem and the Trump administration violated these patriotic Americans’ right to join a union in an unprovoked attack.” The claim about union stewards using official time to protect members “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.
“Our union has been out in front challenging this administration’s unlawful actions targeting federal workers, both in the legal courts and in the court of public opinion. Now our TSA officers are paying the price with this clearly retaliatory action.
“This move by the White House should be viewed in the same context as massive cuts underway at the Veterans Administration, the Department of Education, and other agencies,” AFA-CWA President Nelson added. “ These efforts are designed to break these agencies in order to justify privatizing their functions to send more cash to Wall Street while the rest of us pay the price.”
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