Summary
Trump is revoking collective bargaining rights at the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), ending union protections for thousands of airport security officers.
The Department of Homeland Security claims the move will improve efficiency and security, but unions argue it is a retaliatory attack on federal workers.
The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) plans to challenge the decision. TSA workers fear the rollback will worsen working conditions and retention.
The policy reverses union rights granted under Obama and expanded by Biden.
My love for unions eclipses my hatred for the TSA on this one.
TSA is way more like mall security than police tho.
ACAB all the way, and TSA is little more than a hollow performance, basically security flavored LaCroix that ought to be abolished as genuinely wasteful and needlessly degrading and inconvenient to travelers.
But I don’t really see TSA agents as cops. I’m sure the line blurs in some specific cases, but they’re not going around murdering people with impunity like cops do.
Sort of my feelings here. This isn’t like the FBI or CIA that actively go around trying to fuck people over. Airports wouldn’t function if they acted like that and politicians LOVE to fly.
But also, the TSA is a place we need to defund and mostly dismantle. There’s no reason an airport needs so much security theater other than it makes rich people feel good. They need about as much security as a subway does (not much).
That said, they aren’t first on my list for “defund the police”. That honor belongs to ICE.
Pretty sure you misunderstood op. They’re saying their hatred of TSA is overshadowed by their love of unions meaning they think this is bad because as the other person said, harm to one union harms all unions.
Remember, it’s not a right if it can be taken away! Your right to collectively bargain comes from the fact that there are hundreds of you and one of him, not because he “allowed” it.
Then striking workers have no legal protections, either. Better than no strikes, but we’ve basically lost 100 years of progress.
Lest we forget how we got here. Strikes and collective bargaining were the compromise.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_violence_in_the_United_States
The fun thing about wildcat strikes though is that you don’t need legal protections for them to work. See new York’s illegal prison strike for a good recent example.
TSA could strike and airports would be better for it… That’s a dangerous game for the admin to play.
I think that’s part of the strategy here. “Look at this, I busted up this union and now flying is the most enjoyable it has ever been”
Edit: another piece of this is how much money would be saved by liquidating the TSA.
I know five or six people who work for the TSA, and every one of them are MAGA
I know five or six people who work for the TSA, and every one of them are MAGA
And yet it’s very likely they won’t put two and two together to figure out the sitting Republican president is responsible for their weakened union. Still, this couldn’t have happened to more deserving people.
STRIKE TSA!!! Don’t let them do this to you.
Pardon my ignorance, but how does this even work? Like, don’t they just walk off the job collectively until someone is willing to negotiate with them?
That’s how unions are supposed to work. It’s really the only bargaining chip workers have, at least until we can all be 100% replaced by ai and robots…
Americans are so corporatized that they mistakenly think the power of unions comes from the government
Which is pretty effective propaganda.
Union busters have spent a lot of money to make it feel that way.
And that’s exactly why they’re in some part right. If you have enough money to buy scabs, and protection for the scabs, the union relies on the government making that illegal.
It’s the break down of the pact. At a small scale anyway - obviously the longer it goes on and the further they go with the busting attempts, the more union actions will cause ripples in other industries, and solidarity movements. They can’t buy protection everywhere, and if they try, it’s escalation all the way to the bloodshed that wrote the pact in the first place.
