(The Center Square) – Travelers see Transportation Security Agency checkpoints at airports all around Illinois, from Chicago to the Quad Cities to the Metro East, but now a change at the federal level is affecting those workers.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said it is ending the collective bargaining agreement with the union representing nearly 50,000 workers, in effect declaring the TSA screener union contract null and void. Department spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said the agency will immediately cease using its payroll system for collecting union dues.
Competitive Enterprise Institute labor policy expert Sean Higgins said the agency claimed there were problems of waste and abuse with the practice of union so-called “official time,” at 86% of its airports. “Official time” is the widespread practice in the government of allowing unionized workers to do exclusively union-related work while still drawing a taxpayer-funded salary.
“They had more people doing full time union work than actually doing the screening, so clearly the use of official time was going out of control,” said Higgins.
DHS also claimed that TSA employees were exploiting the current system by abusing sick leave policies, in turn overburdening other screeners who have to pick up extra shifts and other tasks.
The American Federation of Government Employees, the union representing baggage screeners at TSA, said in a statement that the move was “clearly retaliatory” for the union’s lawsuits against the Trump administration over its crackdown on federal employees.
The TSA was created after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when hijackers smuggled knives and box cutters through security to use as weapons as they took control of four airplanes.
There are TSA checkpoints at 11 commercial airports in Illinois, including in Chicago, Bloomington, Springfield and Belleville.
Higgins said since union representatives pushed for higher wages and benefits, the government was literally paying these “official time” workers to make the government even more expensive.
“If TSA workers want union representation, they can pay for their union reps with their own dues, just like private sector unions do,” said Higgins.
