TSA organizing gets boost from Senator Al Franken visit

http://www.workdayminnesota.org/index.php?news_6_4367

By Michael Moore
18 February 2010

BLOOMINGTON - Meeting with Transportation Security Administration officers at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport Monday, Senator Al Franken pledged support for the officers’ organizing drive and said he supports their right to negotiate a union contract.
“You’re doing a fabulous job and you ought to be supported,” the Minnesota Democrat told a gathering of about 25 transportation security officers (TSOs) and representatives of their union, Local 899 of the American Federation of Government Employees.


U.S. Senator Al Franken met with Transportation Security Officers Monday at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.

Photo by Michael Moore

TSOs are hoping the senator will demonstrate his support in two key ways:

• Speeding the confirmation of a new TSA director as soon as President Obama offers a nominee.

Obama’s original nominee to head the agency, Erroll Southers, withdrew his name from consideration last month. Republican senators had placed a hold on Southers’ confirmation after he refused to say whether he would grant TSOs collective-bargaining rights.

Senate Republicans have argued that allowing TSOs to negotiate a union contract would threaten airline security. Franken dismissed that argument, saying union contracts do not hinder firefighters, police, border patrol agents and other employees in the Department of Homeland Security from doing their jobs.

Franken also called high attrition rates in the TSA “troubling,” and said morale “historically has been lower among TSOs than among other groups.”

Those are among the reasons more than 12,000 TSOs have signed up as dues-paying members of AFGE since the agency’s creation in November 2001.

FULL story at link.

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