WASHINGTON (news agencies) — The Department of Homeland Security said Friday that it is ending the collective bargaining agreement with the tens of thousands of frontline employees at the Transportation Security Administration, marking a major effort to dismantle union protections under the Trump administration. The TSA union called it on “unprovoked attack” and vowed to fight it.
The department, in a statement announcing the termination, criticized the union whose staffers are responsible for keeping weapons off airplanes and protecting air travel. The department said that poor performers were being allowed to stay on the job and that the agreement was hindering the ability of the organization “to safeguard our transportation systems and keep Americans safe” — an assessment that faced immediate pushback from a top Democrat in Congress and the union.
“This action will ensure Americans will have a more effective and modernized workforces across the nation’s transportation networks,” the agency said in a statement. “TSA is renewing its commitment to providing a quick and secure travel process for Americans.”
The American Federation of Government Employees is the union representing the TSA workers. The federation and the TSA’s then-administrator, David Pekoske, signed the collective bargaining agreement in May of last year. It came amid a push by Homeland Security to improve the pay for the frontline workers, whose pay has historically lagged behind that of other government employees. Pekoske has credited the pay increases, which went into effect in 2023, as helping to improve employee retention and morale, areas where TSA has had challenges.
The union said in a statement that the order would strip collective bargaining rights from roughly 47,000 transportation security officers, or TSOs. Those are people responsible for staffing airports around the country and checking to make sure that hundreds of thousands of passengers a day do not carry any weapons or explosives into the secure areas of airports.
The union said Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and President Donald Trump’s administration were violating the right of staffers to join a union. It also said that the reasons the Republican administration had given for the decision — specifically the criticisms of union activity — were “completely fabricated.”
Instead, the union said, the decision was retaliation for its wider efforts challenging a range of decisions taken by the Trump administration that have affected federal workers. AFGE represents roughly 800,000 federal government workers in Washington, D.C., and across the country, and it has been pushing back on many of the administration’s actions such as firing probationary employees and cuts to the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID.
“Our union has been out in front challenging this administration’s unlawful actions targeting federal workers, both in the legal courts and in the court of public opinion,” the union said. “Now our TSA officers are paying the price with this clearly retaliatory action.”
The decision to end the collective bargaining agreement comes after Trump’s administration pushed out Pekoske the day Trump was sworn into office. The TSA does not currently have an administrator or a deputy administrator.
In a note to staff, acting TSA Administrator Adam Stahl said Noem made the decision to rescind officers’ collective bargaining rights to align with the Trump administration’s “vision of maximizing government productivity and efficiency and ensuring that our workforce can respond swiftly and effectively to evolving threats.”
“By removing the constraints of collective bargaining, TSOs will be able to operate with greater flexibility and responsiveness, ensuring the highest level of security and efficiency in protecting the American public,” Stahl wrote. “This determination is made with the TSO in mind, ensuring employee inclusivity and restoring meritocracy to the workforce.”
Stahl said the agency “will establish alternative procedures” to address employee concerns and grievances “in a fair and transparent manner.”
The end of the collective bargaining agreement was immediately slammed by the top Democrat on the Homeland Security committee in Congress, Rep. Bennie G. Thompson of Mississippi, who praised the work of TSA staffers in protecting air travel.
“Attempting to negate their legally binding collective bargaining agreement now makes zero sense — it will only reduce morale and hamper the workforce,” Thompson said. “Since the Biden Administration provided pay increases and a new collective bargaining contract to the workforce, TSA’s attrition rates have plummeted.”
Thompson also criticized the Homeland Security press release, saying the department was using “flat out wrong anti-union talking points.” He said the real aim was “diminishing” the workforce so “they can transform it in the mold of Project 2025.”
Project 2025 was the conservative governing blueprint that Trump insisted during the 2024 campaign was not part of his agenda. Project 2025 calls for immediately ending the TSA union and eventually privatizing the entire agency.
The TSA was created after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when hijackers smuggled knives and box cutters through security to use as weapons as they commandeered four airplanes and slammed them into the Pentagon, the World Trade Center towers and a Pennsylvania field. The TSA’s mandate when it was created in November 2001 was to prevent a similar attack in the future.
Air travel since then has undergone a massive overhaul, with passengers and their luggage going through extensive screening at the airport and passenger information generally uploaded to TSA in advance of travel to facilitate screening. Increasingly, the agency has also been using facial recognition technology to scan passengers at checkpoints, leading to criticism by some members of Congress.
media reporter Michael Sisak in New York contributed to this report.
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