Posted on 08/06/2012 2:18:49 PM PDT by Crazieman
From The Right Scoop, initially blogged by PJ Media:
As of Thursday, August 2, 2012, the Transportation Security Administration has agreed to unionize. The agency, best known for groping and offending Americans as we attempt to fly from one part of the country to the other, has agreed to allow the American Federation of Government Employees to unionize its workers.
From the Facebook page of the American Federation of Government Employees, the official announcement:
“For 10 long years AFGE has fought hard so that Transportation Security Officers would have collective bargaining rights. We have often looked back and wondered why it was taking so long,” said AFGE National President John Gage. “Today we begin to look forward.”“This collective bargaining agreement will better the working lives of 45,000 hard-working, dedicated employees, and that’s a fantastic feeling,” AFGE TSA Council 100 President Kim Kraynak-Lambert said. “TSOs come to work every day in the face of intense public and congressional scrutiny and, to the best of their ability, protect this nation from terrorist attacks. Now we can look forward to new rights and new working conditions, and a chance to form a true labor-management partnership. And, contrary to some of the misinformation circulating about TSA, an agreement will not adversely affect security – security related matters were strictly excluded from negotiations. In fact, this agreement will strengthen our ability to carry out TSA’s vital mission of protecting the American people.”
“What this contract will do is provide for increased uniformity on fair treatment and the other issues important to employees across the nation’s airports,” Gage added. “Both parties believe the agreement will also provide much needed schedule flexibility. Improvements in working conditions will also benefit both TSA and the officers by fostering a family-friendly workplace where the employees have greater job satisfaction and feel supported in performing their important security work.”
Of course, the TSA workforce will have to vote on whether or not to ratify the collective bargaining agreement. According to the aforementioned Facebook announcement, that process will be taking place in the coming months. In the meantime, so many jokes can be made about this. Off the top of my head…
1. Fostering a family-friendly workplace. Does that mean no mothers, grandmothers, and children will be groped?
2. Does the TSA’s “important security work” include protection from sexual harassment by federal employees?
3. I’m curious about these “new rights” that TSA employees will get. Will those new rights be given in exchange for giving law-abiding Americans our rights back?
4. “New working conditions,” huh? Given that at least one estimate has said the TSA at one point had failed screening tests 70% of the time, perhaps those new working conditions could include actually finding at least one person who is a potential terrorist threat?
5. From my buddy Nick R. Brown, who is far more clever than I am: “If they strike, do we get to opt out of gropings?”
In all seriousness, the TSA needs significant reform, but this isn’t it. We really don’t need further complications or expense within an agency that continually and unnecessarily violates too many constitutional rights to keep track of. I personally support eliminating its existence entirely, though I admit to not having a cohesive replacement strategy in mind. Last year Ed suggested the TSA continue to look at how Israel conduct its airport security, though a former co-worker with expertise in the airline industry told me that what Israel does would not work for America. Any suggestions in the comments as to how to phase out the TSA and replace it with something better? Or should the TSA stay, and merely be significantly modified?
[Update] A number of comments are talking about the unionization, and asking how it came to be, since the Bush Administration hadn’t allowed unionization. I called James Sherk of The Heritage Foundation to ask him about this, and he explained that the decision to collectively bargain or not has been left up to the Administrator of the TSA. James pointed out that while workers have a right to join a union because of free association, the question always remains as to whether the employer will bargain with that union. Obviously, under Bush, no Administrator was going to do so. Once President Obama got his pick for Administrator through the Senate, however, he instituted collective bargaining in the agency.
"We just need to march on Washington five to ten million strong, and refuse to leave until we get some action on our grievances."
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2915350/posts?page=35#35
"A general strike would be impossible to ignore. Millions of people showing up on the mall demanding change, coupled with millions of closed businesses...""In 1902, strikes in the Caucasus broke out in March, and strikes on the Railway originating from pay disputes took on other issues, and drew in other industries, culminating in a general strike at Rostov-on-Don in November. Daily meetings of 15,000 to 20,000 heard openly revolutionary appeals for the first time, before a massacre defeated the strikes"
"We just need to march on Washington five to ten million strong, and refuse to leave until we get some action on our grievances."
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2915350/posts?page=35#35
"A general strike would be impossible to ignore. Millions of people showing up on the mall demanding change, coupled with millions of closed businesses..."" In 1903 “the whole of South Russia in May, June and July was aflame,”[3] including Baku where separate wage struggles culminated in a city-wide general strike, and Tiflis, where commercial workers gained a reduction in the working day, and were joined by factory workers. In 1904, massive strike waves broke out in Odessa in the spring, Kiev in July, and Baku in December. This all set the stage for the strikes in St. Petersburg in December 1904 to January 1905 seen as the first step in the 1905 revolution."
"We just need to march on Washington five to ten million strong, and refuse to leave until we get some action on our grievances."
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2915350/posts?page=35#35
"A general strike would be impossible to ignore. Millions of people showing up on the mall demanding change, coupled with millions of closed businesses...""Start of the revolutionIn December 1904, a strike occurred at the Putilov plant (a railway and artillery supplier) in St. Petersburg. Sympathy strikes in other parts of the city raised the number of strikers to over 80,000. Controversial Orthodox priest George Gapon, who headed a police-sponsored workers' association, led a huge workers' procession to the Winter Palace to deliver a petition[5] to the Tzar on Sunday, 22 January [O.S. 9 January] 1905. The troops guarding the Winter Palace who had been ordered to tell the demonstrators not to pass a certain point, according to Sergei Witte, opened fire on them, which resulted in more than 200 (according to Witte) to 1000 deaths. The event became known as Bloody Sunday, and is usually considered the start of the active phase of the revolution.
The events in St. Petersburg provoked public indignation and a series of massive strikes that spread quickly throughout the industrial centres of the Russian Empire. Polish socialists — both the PPS and the SDKPiL — called for a general strike..."
"We just need to march on Washington five to ten million strong, and refuse to leave until we get some action on our grievances."
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2915350/posts?page=35#35
"A general strike would be impossible to ignore. Millions of people showing up on the mall demanding change, coupled with millions of closed businesses..."" By the end of January 1905, over 400,000 workers in Russian Poland were on strike (see Revolution in the Kingdom of Poland (1905–1907)). Half of European Russia's industrial workers went on strike in 1905, 93.2% in Poland.[6] There were also strikes in Finland and the Baltic coast. In Riga, 80 protesters were killed on 26 January [O.S. 13 January] 1905, and in Warsaw a few days later over 100 strikers were shot on the streets. By February, there were strikes in the Caucasus, and by April, in the Urals and beyond. In March, all higher academic institutions were forcibly closed for the remainder of the year, adding radical students to the striking workers. A strike by railway workers on 21 October [O.S. 8 October] 1905 quickly developed into a general strike in Saint Petersburg and Moscow."
"We just need to march on Washington five to ten million strong, and refuse to leave until we get some action on our grievances."
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2915350/posts?page=35#35
"A general strike would be impossible to ignore. Millions of people showing up on the mall demanding change, coupled with millions of closed businesses..."" This prompted the setting up of the short-lived Saint Petersburg Soviet of Workers' Deputies, a largely Menshevik group led by Leon Trotsky, which organised strike action in over 200 factories.[7] By 26 October [O.S. 13 October] 1905, over 2 million workers were on strike and there were almost no active railways in all of Russia. Growing inter-ethnic confrontation throughout the Caucasus resulted in Armenian-Tatar massacres, heavily damaging the cities and the Baku oilfields."
"We just need to march on Washington five to ten million strong, and refuse to leave until we get some action on our grievances."
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2915350/posts?page=35#35
"A general strike would be impossible to ignore. Millions of people showing up on the mall demanding change, coupled with millions of closed businesses..."" The Saint Petersburg Soviet was formed and called for a general strike in October, refusal to pay taxes, and the withdrawal of bank deposits.."
"We just need to march on Washington five to ten million strong, and refuse to leave until we get some action on our grievances."
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2915350/posts?page=35#35
"A general strike would be impossible to ignore. Millions of people showing up on the mall demanding change, coupled with millions of closed businesses..."" Between 5 and 7 December [O.S. 22 and 24 November], there was a general strike by Russian workers. The government sent in troops on 7 December, and a bitter street-by-street fight began. A week later the Semenovskii Regiment was deployed, and used artillery to break-up demonstrations and to shell workers' districts. On 18 December [O.S. 5 December], with around a thousand people dead and parts of the city in ruins, the workers surrendered."
That your momma?
Keep posting photos of your family if you like - it won’t change anything.
Certainly not the fact that your assertion that instigating a General Strike is somehow “conservative” — is nothing but a pretentious lie.
"Pull him down! Pull him down! He will fall, he will catch fire, put him out! . . . What is he doing there?"
"He is putting the fire out, your Excellency."
"Not likely. The fire is in the minds of men and not in the roofs of houses."
--Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Possessed
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8117
"We just need to march on Washington five to ten million strong, and refuse to leave until we get some action on our grievances."--DoughtyOne, Autobiography of a Useful Idiot
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2915350/posts?page=35#35
"A general strike would be impossible to ignore. Millions of people showing up on the mall demanding change, coupled with millions of closed businesses..."--DoughtyOne, Autobiography of a Useful Idiot" Between 5 and 7 December [O.S. 22 and 24 November], there was a general strike by Russian workers. The government sent in troops on 7 December, and a bitter street-by-street fight began. A week later the Semenovskii Regiment was deployed, and used artillery to break-up demonstrations and to shell workers' districts. On 18 December [O.S. 5 December], with around a thousand people dead and parts of the city in ruins, the workers surrendered."
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