In a memo that that one TSA employee said sounded like “a teenage blogger writing about someone they don’t like,” the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced March 7 that it was canceling the union contract for 47,000 workers at the Transportation Security Administration (TSA).
The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) signed its contract with TSA in May 2024, and it wasn’t set to expire until 2031.
DHS also stopped deducting union dues and ordered all union officers to immediately return to their transportation security officer (TSO) duties. Workers voted in the union in 2011.
“To have this thing that you fought for . . . wiped away at the speed of an email, without any notice, was devastating,” said Joe Shuker, who hired in twenty years ago and worked to build the union. “But look,” he said, “we’ve been here before.”
Suddenly without a union, “the creep and the rot is coming back quickly,” said Lowell Denny, a TSO in Austin, Texas. By Saturday morning, management was already telling TSOs not to call in sick, he said.
“They’re back to the old tone: ‘We’re watching you,’” said Denny, who has worked for TSA for twenty years at five different airports. He recalled how, before workers had a contract with seniority rules, agency managers would “give their favorites prime schedules.”
“In San Diego, the assistant federal security director was laughing to the employees and kind of taunting them, like, ‘Hey, you don’t have a union anymore,’” said Bobby Orozco, president of the Southern…
Auteur: Jenny Brown
