Would Airport Security Screeners Go On Strike?

Over at the Heritage Foundation's Foundry blog, James Sherk voices concerns today about the move earlier this year to extend collective bargaining rights to TSA screeners.

Collective bargaining, he writes, is "inherently adversarial," pitting labor against management in ways that "often leads to strikes and job actions." But TSA screeners, like other federal employees, wouldn't be allowed to strike. That's not enough protection for Sherk. "Unfortunately," he writes, "government unions often illegally strike despite such prohibitions, putting vital public services at risk."

That's certainly not true at the federal level. Not since the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Association Strike of 1981 has any federal union had the temerity to defy the prohibition on strikes. Indeed, even private sector unions became hesitant to launch full-scale strikes in the wake of the mass firings that resulted from the PATCO strike. So I think you can file "TSA strike" under the category of "extremely unlikely."