Jobs with Justice coalitions in several major airport locations across the country, including: Seattle, Portland, Denver, St. Louis, Orlando, Washington DC, and Boston are actively supporting the nationwide campaign to organize 40,000 airport security screeners.  This campaign, considered to be the largest union organizing effort in the U.S., includes workers at airports across the country, where union activists and allies are demonstrating support for the women and men who help keep air travel as safe as possible.

Background:

Following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, AFGE successfully urged the U.S. government to take charge of airport screening from a collection of private employers and make all airport screeners federal employees.  But the legislation that federalized airport screeners, creating the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), also stripped the newly federalized workers of their rights.  The law gave the new TSA sole discretion to decide the terms of employment of the security workforce, including their collective bargaining rights.

President George W. Bush successfully used the fear created by the terrorist attacks to move his anti-union agenda in creating the TSA.  Bush administration officials claimed that union representation of workers would deny TSA the “flexibility” required to wage the war against terrorism.

AFGE strongly

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