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TSA's Union Power Grab: Thousands Slowing Down Airports
Townhall.com ^ | May 15, 2016 | Michelle Malkin

Posted on 05/18/2016 4:36:10 AM PDT by Kaslin

When it comes to public employee unions, there's no such thing as a coincidence.

All you travelers stuck in mile-long TSA security lines are pawns. Convenient political pawns. Big Labor bosses want more power and more money. Stranded travelers are just the latest victims in this age-old game of D.C. extortion.

Union leaders want you to think the fault lies with a stingy Congress unwilling to fork over enough money to fill screener shortages. White House spokesman Josh Earnest poured more partisan fuel on the fire last week by blaming the nationwide slowdowns on "the inability of Republicans in Congress to govern the country."

What a load of flying horse hockey.

The 15-year-old Transportation Security Administration now has a massive annual budget of nearly $7.6 billion and a workforce of nearly 60,000. They had enough tax dollars to waste on an idiotic $1.4 million iPad app that randomly points left or right; $3 million on more than 200 useless explosive detection "puffer" machines that didn't detect explosives reliably; and unknown gobs in awards and automatic bonuses to senior TSA managers at a time when the agency was repeatedly failing internal tests of its ability to stop weapons, bombs and terror threats.

Yet, last week, with airlines, airports and customers all raising holy hell, Congress scraped together $34 million more to pay TSA screeners overtime and fund nearly 800 more screeners to address the summer travel crush.

It's still not enough of course. It's never enough. Since last fall, the TSA workforce (unionized under the Obama administration) has staged protests at major airports (including Dallas-Fort Worth, JFK, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis/St. Paul and Atlanta) organized by the American Federation of Government Employees, which is demanding full collective bargaining rights under federal labor law, along with hefty pay increases.

Obstruction is priority number one.

The agitators whine that TSA workers are not "respected" enough as a profession. "Morale for TSA Officers is at an all-time low," AFGE TSA Council President Hydrick Thomas complained in a recent statement. "We work very hard under some of the most stressful and dangerous conditions, but are treated like second-class employees as compared to the rest of the federal workforce. We just want equal treatment."

Perhaps if TSA officials weren't letting 95 percent of mock explosives and firearms through during audits and inspections, or if they weren't gratuitously groping grandmas and breast-feeding moms and wounded veterans, or recklessly handing out TSA Precheck status "like candy" as one whistleblower put it last year, or dumping 3,000 pieces of luggage in parking lots as a result of software "glitches," as happened last week at Phoenix's Sky Harbor Airport, or employing unknown numbers of criminals, or rewarding serial failures, we wouldn't all be snickering at their Rodney "I don't get no respect!" Dangerfield comedy routine.

Expanding TSA workers' collective bargaining rights is about expanding union bosses' authority to dictate every last detail of employment -- from pay and officer assignments to schedules and uniforms. The reason full bargaining rights under Title V of U.S. labor law have not been extended to TSA agents is to protect the agency's flexibility and discretion in the interest of national security. Yep, remember that? You know, the very reason the TSA was created in the first place?

If you think the current lapses in TSA hiring practices are bad, just wait until you have a system dominated by union negotiators who are allergic to merit pay and committed to protecting every last incompetent member to the death.

TSA union leaders hungry for new members and fattened coffers don't care about your security. This is all about control and money. Multiply 55,000 by $50/month in mandatory union dues and -- voila! -- they'll have $33 million a year to shower on politicians who'll do their bidding.

Is there anything the flying public can do to put a stop to this cynical exercise of Big Labor muscle?

Let me remind you of Government Shutdown Theater in 2013, when Washington held America's monuments and national parks hostage. Remember? Fed-up taxpayers finally revolted and broke down the Barry-cades blocking them from access to the public spaces they subsidize.

I'm not advocating breaking through those long lines in grand acts of civil disobedience (not just yet, anyway). But it is long past time for sick and tired, beleaguered and molested, robbed and overtaxed travelers to demand respect of their own and call out this selfish, security-undermining Big Labor power grab.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; Government
KEYWORDS: tsa; tsaoutofcontrol
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1 posted on 05/18/2016 4:36:10 AM PDT by Kaslin
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To: Kaslin

When this came up in the media a few weeks ago, that was my first thought: “they are unionized, this is what they do”


2 posted on 05/18/2016 4:39:42 AM PDT by Psalm 73 ("Gentlemen, you can't fight in here - this is the War Room".)
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To: Kaslin
The agitators whine that TSA workers are not "respected" enough as a profession.

Well, yeah.

I hold them in contempt.

That's on a good day, when I'm not holding them beneath contempt.

3 posted on 05/18/2016 4:43:41 AM PDT by NorthMountain (A plague o' both your houses.)
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To: Kaslin

Wait until Obamacare fails and the government unions take over healthcare.


4 posted on 05/18/2016 4:46:09 AM PDT by PJammers (Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?)
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To: Psalm 73

They are unionized, and they are federal gubmint employees—A sure recipe for disaster.

I have no sympathy for the airline industry, as they were more than happy to cede the responsibility for security to the feds.


5 posted on 05/18/2016 4:48:11 AM PDT by Arm_Bears (Rope. Tree. Politician/Journalist. Some assembly required.)
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To: PJammers

Government unions overtaking healthcare? I don’t think I could ever imagine that.


6 posted on 05/18/2016 4:49:31 AM PDT by Kaslin (He needed the ignorant to reelect him. He got them and now we have to pay the consequences)
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To: Psalm 73

Yep.

Its a slow down.

Start cracking skulls and kick whosever butt it was that thought it was a good idea for them to be union.

I did my college thesis on aviation security and when I was doing research I found a website with many TSA workers seeking ways to go on disability.


7 posted on 05/18/2016 4:50:15 AM PDT by Cowgirl of Justice
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To: Kaslin

Think VA on a national level.


8 posted on 05/18/2016 4:53:46 AM PDT by PJammers (Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?)
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To: Arm_Bears

Did the airlines have any choice? You knew when it happened it was gummit employees at work.

Pray America wakes


9 posted on 05/18/2016 4:53:51 AM PDT by bray (Trump/Palin 2016)
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To: Cowgirl of Justice
TSA workers seeking ways to go on disability

Same as postal workers. With some of them, their goal of "success" is to get on light duty or disability.

10 posted on 05/18/2016 4:55:10 AM PDT by Mannaggia l'America
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To: Kaslin

And Jeh Jackson and Obama aren’t going to do anything about it... they are the business agents for the TSA union.


11 posted on 05/18/2016 4:56:07 AM PDT by Mannaggia l'America
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To: Mannaggia l'America

Naturally


12 posted on 05/18/2016 4:58:41 AM PDT by Kaslin (He needed the ignorant to reelect him. He got them and now we have to pay the consequences)
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To: Kaslin

When the $15/hr minimum wage gets traction, all the fired fast food workers should go work for TSA.


13 posted on 05/18/2016 4:58:58 AM PDT by baltimorepoet
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To: Kaslin

Someday TSA will go into the dustbin of history as another useless government bureaucracy and the airlines will have to take responsibility for airport security.

The only question is—how many of us will live long enough to see it?


14 posted on 05/18/2016 5:03:29 AM PDT by cgbg (Epistemology is not a spectator sport.)
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To: Kaslin

I think if people could come up with a song ridiculing the TSA that they would sing outside the security area, the TSA would push them through pretty fast.


15 posted on 05/18/2016 5:06:20 AM PDT by Jonty30 (What Islam and secularism have in common is that they are both death cults)
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To: Kaslin

BUT BUT BUT
After 9/11 all we heard was, “We need screeners at airports “To protect the public”
They gave us TSA.
Then from 2002 until 2009 all we heard was. “We need to unionize TSA, ‘in order to be more professional” (Remember that one?)
They gave us a unionized TSA.
From 2010 until 2016, all we have heard is, “We need a larger TSA.”
They have given us longer and longer lines. Now complete airport shutdowns.
Coming soon a doubling and redoubling of TSA. A true political spoils system that makes Tammany Hall look picayune .


16 posted on 05/18/2016 5:06:36 AM PDT by Tupelo (we vote - THEY decide.)
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To: cgbg

Sadly, the TSA will never “go into the dustbin of history”.

It is part of the police state.

The elites want a police state.

End of argument. We lost.


17 posted on 05/18/2016 5:13:35 AM PDT by T-Bone Texan (Don't be a lone wolf. Form up small leaderlesss cells ASAP !)
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To: Kaslin

I seem to remember a President named Reagan doing something about unionized airport workers. But that was a different time and a President that knew how to stand up. We have had nothing but one world _residents since.


18 posted on 05/18/2016 5:15:52 AM PDT by certrtwngnut
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To: Kaslin

“We work very hard under some of the most stressful and dangerous conditions...”

Vicious darn grandmas.


19 posted on 05/18/2016 5:16:08 AM PDT by moovova
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To: Kaslin
Privatization is being spoken about here and there as the answer.

Leni

20 posted on 05/18/2016 5:21:27 AM PDT by MinuteGal ( GO, TRUMP, GO !!!)
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