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.
I think it has been about 8 years, except one quick trip from Portland, OR to Palm Springs last year for my nephews wedding. I was ready to go ballistic if someone touched me, they did not and I completed the super stressful task of flying without incident.
Staring at a monitor, picking through toothpaste and sexually assaulting Lutheran grandmothers is not a ‘profession.’
One of the biggest mistakes the TSA and its progenitors made was dressing them in police style uniforms with those ludicrous fake badges. It was the usual lazy attempt to capitalize on the public’s conditioned reaction to seeing a police officer. It also convinced anyone with a sufficiently flawed character to work for the TSA that they were actually important, empowered, effective, etc.
Talk to any cop and their opinion of the TSA and their fakery is lower than ours.
Ironically, the original white TSA shirts were scrapped in part because there were so many of the fat XXXXL bastards that it looked like a snowbank....and they regularly sweated through the uniforms.
In a very loud voice she said, "if you are wanting to go third base with me, we are doing it right here in front of everyone, no one is taking me behind a closed door, to molest me, we need witnesses!"
Paging Doug from Upland, your talent is sorely needed here.
We flew from San Francisco on Monday last week. NO WAIT. What happened from Monday to Wednesday??? That is what needs to be exposed!
I'll vouch for that. Salt Lake City is one of the most polite towns in America and when checking in there last time, one of the TSA agents asked me how I was enjoying my trip so far.
Feeling rather naughty, I replied "It was fine until I ran into you jay-birds."
His face dropped and he exclaimed "Well, you always have the choice of not boarding the flight."
Before I could reply, several other passengers chimed in that his comment was out of order. The line noticeably begin to speed up at that point.
"Yes!" I thought. "A small victory for the peasants!"
I suspect the same thing. A few years ago I was flying out of Midway in Chicago and there was an unusually long and slow moving line. As I approached the ID checking station I could see that the TSA agent was working very slowly, enough that people were angry about it. He was switched out for another agent and I thought, great, the boss noticed that the other guy was working too slowly.
No such luck. The newly assigned TSA agent worked just as slowly as the guy before him, simply holding each passenger's ID for a long time before marking off their boarding pass. In my case I counted 23 seconds before the agent marked off my boarding pass.
At the time I thought it was either a work slow down, or some kind of experiment to see how people reacted. And react they did. I kept my mouth shut but plenty of people said what they were thinking. Clearly the TSA agents were intentionally delaying the ID checking process.
The stories by the TSA that somehow now there are way more travelers than before doesn't ring true. The line length depends most critically on how fast the TSA processes each person, since every airport gets large numbers of people at certain times of day.
Long lines indicate slow TSA workers. The only question is whether it is intentional, or just due to poor training and management.
I have a dream.
That the TSA will go on strike under President Trump. He then fires them all and calls in the National Guard until new non-union security can be hired and trained to replace them.
I dream of that day.
I know a couple of TSA employees, and I can tell you this, it is a thankless job. The grunts who do the groundwork are overworked and underpaid, the management should be fired, all of them. They sound like the worst run division of the federal government (and I had worked for the Feds for many years. So that is saying something). That division is a dumpster fire.
TSA needs to be shut down. Its costly, worthless and tyrannical. The airports and airlines need to provide their own security.
TSA=Too Stupid for Arby’s
TSA= Thousands Standing Around
Lately in Denver and Milwaukee there has been a move to canine TSA. They go up and down the line and when I got to scanner was able to move thru without taking shoes off or taking laptop out. I know it is a test program but makes too much sense. A trained Labrador or Beagle has more cognitive thought than average TSA drone and work a lot cheaper (bacon treats and a new toy).
Post the Link!
Send it to Drudge/Fox/Trump
“I sense that 95% of the people around me are bleating sheep”.
I sense that your sense is on the low side, prolly more like 99.9%
This was back in 2004 when I was writing my senior thesis. It was a TSA employee forum and probably not hard to find.
Fire them all.
T Bone Texan,
You are a great person. You are a leader.
So long as one’s behavior does not effect your job, acting assertive to bullies, speaking up loudly in public, is right for some situations. People are fearful to act bold in public. But the sheep are paying attention and believe they too can be bolder someday.
Act assertive but not aggressive in public.
Texan you are a strong, honorable person.
Inspiring!
Collective bargaining for govt and transportation must be outlawed. The taxpayer/consumer has no say whatsoever.
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