Senators Give TSA Screeners Union Rights

In this photo, released by the Florida Keys News Bureau, passengers enter a Transportation Security Administration security screening zone, Thursday, Feb. 15, 2007, at Florida Keys Marathon Airport in Marathon, Fla. Thursday marked the first day since April 2000 that commercial air service flew to and from Marathon. Originally, Delta Connection service, between Atlanta and Marathon was to have begun in November, but last August, TSA officials, citing budget constraints, said they could not provide security screening. That decision was reversed in early December clearing the way for service to start Thursday. (AP Photo/Florida Keys News Bureau, Andy Newman) (Andy Newman - AP)

WASHINGTON -- A Senate committee voted Thursday to give airport screeners the collective bargaining and whistleblower protection rights that many other federal employees have.

On a strict party-line vote, Democrats on the Senate Homeland Security Committee agreed, while all the Republicans voted against, giving the screeners the right to join a union and to be protected from retaliation if they report wrongdoing.

The measure, which is opposed by the Bush administration, passed on a vote of 9-8.

Committee chairman Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., noted that when the Transportation Security Administration was created in the wake of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Congress gave it authority to ignore certain civil service laws for national security reasons.

As a result, TSA's chief has had sole authority to make decisions regarding labor rights for airport security workers. Lieberman said that since 2001, TSA has declared itself exempt from additional laws "enforcing the most basic employee protections," in each case devising its own separate rules.

The senator said that TSA personnel management has been troubled from the beginning, with "unusually high rates of attrition, vacancy, workplace injury, discrimination complaints, and other indications of employee dissatisfaction."

The administration and committee Republicans argued that TSA management, and its parent agency, the Homeland Security Department, need the flexibility to respond quickly to any terror alert or attack.

They cite last summer's London liquid-bomb plot, and TSA's ability to quickly change, virtually overnight, its staffing and procedures in response. They fear giving screeners collective bargaining rights would interfere with that flexibility.

The Republican leader on the panel, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said she "reluctantly" opposed the measure, adding that hearings are needed to examine the issue more closely.

Other Republicans agreed that more study was needed, but Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, said: "They should not have the basic rights you're talking about here today."

In 2002 when Congress debated the creation of the Homeland Security department, one contentious issue was the extent to which the new agency's employees should have union bargaining rights.

The issue resonated in national elections that year, with then-Sen. Max Cleland, D-Ga., being defeated by an opponent, Republican Saxby Chambliss, who accused Cleland of opposing anti-terror steps because he had voted against the bill that did not contain federal employee rights.