Plain and simple: collective bargaining rights are your workplace voice.

When TSA was created in late 2001, agency leadership did not grant TSA employees collective bargaining rights, claiming such rights would limit management authority in case of an emergency. These concerns have been completely discredited by the record of employees at other agencies within DHS, all of whom have collective bargaining rights.

Collective bargaining rights would allow TSOs to speak up effectively about job site issues as critical as:

• Training and certification;
• Performance appraisals;
• Promotions;
• Hours of work;
• Overtime;
• Shift bidding and schedule rotations;
• Workplace health and safety accommodations;
• Parking and transit subsidies.

Each of these issues would be covered under a written contract reached jointly between NTEU and TSA management that would also include a negotiated grievance procedure mandating binding arbitration by a neutral third party; not the in-house process and Peer Review Panel that TSA currently uses.

With high hopes for a new Congress, NTEU strongly supports H.R. 1881, the Transportation Security Workforce Enhancement Act of 2009. Now pending in the U.S. House of Representatives, this bill would provide collective bargaining rights to TSA employees nationwide for the first time. NTEU is also working with the Obama administration to secure collective bargaining rights through executive action.