DHS Moves To End Collective Bargaining for TSA Officers
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is moving to end collective bargaining for tens of thousands of Transportation Security Administration airport screeners, less than a year after TSA’s workforce inked a landmark labor agreement.
The Department of Homeland Security announced plans “ending collective bargaining” for TSA’s transportation screening officers in a press release today.
The DHS public affairs office cast the move as increasing efficiency, safety and “organizational agility.” It charged that a “select few poor performers” are taking advantage of the agreement’s family and sick leave policy. DHS’ press release also claimed that nearly 200 TSOs — out of a screening workforce of approximately 47,000 — work “full time” on union matters.“
Thanks to Secretary Noem’s action, Transportation Security Officers will no longer lose their hard-earned dollars to a union that does not represent them,” a DHS spokesperson wrote in the press release. “The Trump administration is committed to returning to merit-based hiring and firing policies. This action will ensure Americans will have a more effective and modernized workforce across the nation’s transportation networks. TSA is renewing its commitment to providing a quick and secure travel process for Americans.”
Noem’s new “determination,” laid out in a Feb. 27 memo to acting TSA Administrator Adam Stahl, rescinded a 2022 decision by the Biden administration to expand collective bargaining rights for airport screeners.
Last May, TSA and the American Federation of Government Employees signed a new, seven-year collective bargaining agreement. But Noem writes that her new determination means last year’s CBA “is no longer applicable or binding and is hereby rescinded.” She is giving TSA leadership 90 days from Feb. 27 to terminate the CBA, including cancelling any pending grievances filed by AFGE on behalf of an employee.
Additionally, Noem’s memo rescinds the limited collective bargaining rights TSO’s had first been granted in 2011.
Noem’s memo also gives TSA leaders 90 days to “consider what actions may be taken, consistent with the law, to ensure that no future administration may permit TSOs to elect an exclusive representative or engage in collective bargaining absent an intervening statutory change.”
AFGE National President Everett Kelley in a statement today called the move to end collective bargaining for TSO’s “clear retaliation” against the union. Kelley also said the claims about union officials were “clearly fabricated.”
“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,” Kelley said. “Now our TSA officers are paying the price with this clearly retaliatory action.
”“Let’s be clear: this is the beginning, not the end, of the fight for Americans’ fundamental rights to join a union,” Kelley added. “AFGE will not rest until the basic dignity and rights of the workers at TSA are acknowledged by the government once again.”
Meanwhile, House Homeland Security Committee Ranking Member Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) said DHS was “lying about TSA’s work” in its press release, “relying on antiquated and flat out wrong anti-union talking points.” He argued ending collective bargaining would reduce morale at the agency.
“DHS claiming that TSA has more people doing ‘full-time union work’ than ‘performing screening functions’ at most airports is clearly nonsense,” Thompson said. “Similarly, promotions are already merit based and often only occur with the assistance of the union, not despite it. To the Trump administration and Secretary Noem, this isn’t about improving security or the workforce, it’s about diminishing a workforce so they can transform it in the mold of Project 2025. This will make us all less safe — and I hope it is challenged in court.”
Under the Biden administration, TSOs received a historic pay increase in addition to expanded collective bargaining. DHS leaders at the time said bringing TSA’s pay and labor rights in line with the rest of the federal workforce would help address longstanding morale challenges and recruiting shortfalls that had plagued the screening workforce.
“If we didn’t have this CBA, if we didn’t have this pay package, I would submit to you, we probably wouldn’t have a TSA in five or 10 years,” then-TSA Administrator David Pekoske said last May at the CBA signing ceremony. “That’s how important it is.”
The Trump administration, meanwhile, has broadly sought to limit union activities across the federal government. President Donald Trump also directed agencies to cancel union contracts signed in the last month of the Biden administration, but the TSA-AFGE contract would fall well outside that range.