Pro-Right to Work Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) has a post up on RedState explaining how monopoly bargaining for Transportation Security Administration (TSA) employees could interfere with the agency's ability to effectively respond to threats.
DeMint points out that union monopoly control of border patrol agents, and the wasteful and inefficient rules preferred by the union bosses, has made it difficult for the government to discipline, reassign, or terminate employees.
To best protect our national security, the government must have the resources to remove egregious offenders from the positions and allocate resources as efficiently as possible. DeMint outlines how monopoly bargaining for TSA agents could weaken our national security:
Requiring TSA to get union bosses' permission before implementing security and workforce changes. If the unions decided the changes were too burdensome on their employees, weeks or months of negotiations could ensue, causing unacceptable delays in implementing new safety protocols.
Requiring TSA managers to promote based on seniority, not merit, and making it more difficult to discipline failing employees.
Requiring TSA to share sensitive intelligence information to third parties during negotiations with union bosses, making future leaks of classified material more likely.
"Lets keep our focus at TSA on security, not politics," DeMint concludes.
Read the full post here. And don't forget, along with the important policy concerns raised by the Senator, union monopoly bargaining powers represent a fundamental violation of the rights (pdf) of all individual employees, TSA agent, or anyone else.
True to form, compulsory unionism advocates are exploiting a serious situation to try to force more workers into union monopoly control. In this case, union bosses have long set their sights on forcing America's airport screeners into union ranks. From the Wall Street Journal:
The notion that unionized airport baggage screeners in Detroit could have prevented Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab from boarding a plane in Amsterdam or Lagos doesn't make much sense. But sure enough, some in Congress are using the thwarted Christmas Day terrorist attack to argue that a new leader for the Transportation Security Administration could have saved the day.
Rahm Emanuel's famous declaration that a crisis is a terrible thing to waste seems to have become a way of Washington life.
That's the meaning of the political and media beatdown now being visited on Republican Senator Jim DeMint for the high crime of putting a hold on the nomination of Erroll Southers to head TSA, which runs the 50,000 airport screeners. Mr. DeMint objects because Mr. Southers has refused to say whether he would reverse current policy and back collective bargaining for baggage and passenger screeners, which the Obama Administration and Democrats on Capitol Hill support.
...Mr. DeMint's objection is rooted in a substantive concern that union practices and work rules will compromise security. TSA uses a performance pay system that tries to reward ability and effort, with the goal of recruiting and retaining the best employees. Unions prefer seniority-based pay that puts a premium on time served rather than performance.
TSA also needs to be able to change its procedures or move personnel to high-risk locations on short notice. Agency managers now have the ability to do that, but under union work rules they might need to get the permission of union leaders, who won't want to upset the rank-and-file.
In other words, Congressman Thompson has it exactly backwards. If the goal is to have a "nimble, responsive" TSA, a non-union work force makes more sense.
The Journal correctly points out that union boss work rules can hamper TSA's efforts to keep our skies safe. But also, union bosses often put the expansion of their forced unionism empire before the safety of the public and even the very employees they claim to represent.
But it doesn't stop at airport screeners, Big Labor is actively pushing to subject America's first responders to union monopoly control as well.
Syndicated columnist Doug Bandow has a piece out detailing efforts by the AFL-CIO brass to enlist the help of the United Nations affiliate International Labor Organization (ILO) in attaining more special privileges to corral workers into forced unionism.
Bandow cites that union officials are:
"...no longer are satisfied playing solely by U.S. rules."
How true. The column also addresses the controversy over the forced unionization of TSA screeners, an issue the National Right to Work Foundation has weighed in on during past years.
