Commentary
The Trump administration’s move to end collective bargaining for over
40,000 Transportation Security Administration (
TSA) employees is good for America. That does not mean that a slash-and-burn approach to every single one of the TSA employees, or other federal employees, is the right approach. Most do their jobs admirably. The security elements of the federal government, especially the military and intelligence agencies, are the only things standing between the public and the world’s most dangerous terrorist and authoritarian regimes in China, Russia, and Iran.
However, decreasing the power of the government workers’ union will increase the
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) budget for TSA workers, allow for equipment upgrades, streamline security checks at airports, and save money for the taxpayer and time for travellers.
Unions tend to obstruct necessary management decision-making to balance the needs of workers and the necessities of the mission. In a democracy, unions throw the balance off towards unionized workers, to the detriment of non-unionized workers, the unemployed, and the public generally. This is especially the case for highly-politicized government worker unions, whose workers already have it good relative to the average American. But this is rarely acknowledged because of the immense political power of unions in Washington, D.C.
In the case of DHS and the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), which represents TSA workers, the dynamics are little different. The government reformer’s mission is key. In cancelling TSA worker collective bargaining, the DHS seeks to remove “bureaucratic hurdles that will strengthen workforce agility, enhance productivity and resiliency, while also jump-starting innovation,” according to a DHS representative cited in the Wall Street Journal.
The DHS also seeks to end the practice whereby over 190 TSA officers are paid with tax dollars to work full-time on union matters rather than as security officers. If some TSA employees want to run a union, they should do so on their own time - not with the hard-earned dollars of U.S. taxpayers.
The DHS move against the AFGE will save annual
dues for TSA workers themselves. The average AFGE fee is about $250, and is officially voluntary. But there are often subtle social pressures that unions accept to “encourage” workers to pay up. Dues paid by approximately
321,000 AFGE members every year amount to an annual budget on the order of $80 million.
Unlike many unions, the AFGE has grown its membership over the years. AFGE represents approximately 800,000 (mostly not dues-paying) federal and Washington, D.C., government employees. Due to threatened payroll cuts by the Trump administration, the union gained approximately 8,000 workers per month in January and February, an eight-fold increase over what was expected.
The union arguably makes it more difficult to fire the few bad apples, and objectively decreases a natural attrition that makes room for
new hires more suited to the job. In TSA’s case, one local union leader was convicted in 2022 of misappropriating almost
$30,000 in union funds on a travel card for personal use. In recent years, dozens of AFGE employees were reportedly convicted for
corruption-related charges. Since 2001, the number of convictions of AFGE officials is over
130. Politicians tend to look the other way, as the union has reportedly spent over $1 million supporting political candidates, mostly Democrats, in major election years.
Luckily, the
DHS has greater rights over its TSA employees than other federal departments, due to the TSA’s critical role in ensuring the safety of U.S. transportation networks. The Trump administration argues that this gives the DHS the legal right to unilaterally cancel the AFGE’s collective bargaining agreement. But, the union will contest this in court.
AFGE president Everett Kelley said in February that the union simply wants the Trump administration to “follow the law and regulations” when managing the size of the federal workforce. “If this administration wants to say there are too many people working for the federal government, they should follow the directives, they should follow the policies, they should follow the law in getting to a number that they have prescribed,”
he said.
In a democracy, it is always good to follow the law. And, the U.S. Congress has the constitutional power of the purse. The Constitution above all should remain sacrosanct—a principle that the Trump administration has come perilously
close to violating.
That said, America does need to find a way to reduce the federal workforce to decrease the unsustainable national debt of over
$36 trillion.
A federal job should not be a sinecure, but subject to the same market discipline under which the rest of America must labor. Yet, Democratic presidents since John F. Kennedy in 1962, have increased
AFGE powers. The Obama administration first granted some collective bargaining rights to TSA workers in 2011, though not over wages. The Biden administration gave AFGE yet more collective bargaining power, inking a seven-year contract in 2024 for TSA workers that will last until 2031.
Think what you may about the Trump administration, but decreasing the power of the AFGE over taxpayers, at least, is a step in the right direction.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
