TSA's New Bargaining Position

In early 2003, then-TSA Administrator James Loy announced that under no circumstances would the agency engage in collective bargaining with its screeners. Now the agency has taken a very different position with regard to the screeners employed by the private companies who are now eligible to provide services at certain airports. While TSA screeners "are statutorily barred from engaging in mandatory collective bargaining," the agency's chief counsel has told the National Labor Relations Board, "it is TSA's position that this provision does not extend to aviation security screeners employed by qualified screening companies." That position has drawn the ire of the National Right To Work Foundation, which says that it is not only inconsistent, but raises "the possibility of terrorist infiltration of unions."