TSA Union Jumps into Action to Defend Deadbeat Florida Screeners
The TSA at Southwest Florida International Airport is broken. First there's this grope-on-grope national controversy, the details of which we absolutely lack the patience to untangle. A former agent violently groped a current agent to show how a third agent had maybe violently groped the former agent, because maybe the former agent was trying to show the current agent how the former agent should have been nonviolently groped by the third agent. And was once or is currently a co-worker of everyone else in the story. And somehow a hug is involved, and also obviously an arrest.
Here's a video of the arrested woman's attorney and here's the original footage so you can figure it out on your own.
Second, there's the story of the 43 screeners at RSW who, over a two month period, directly or indirectly failed to do random screenings during overnight shifts and missed about 400 passengers. In one sense the story is already old. The workers have either been suspended or terminated and replacement workers are in place. TSA is even engaged in public damage control with the help of sympathetic journalists. Done and done, right?
Not quite. Remember when the political appointees in charge of TSA decided to let security workers unionize? To answer concerned critics, agency officials insisted that the new collective bargaining agreement wouldn't include "any topics that might affect security," a talking point we described at the time as "insultingly stupid." Since federal employees aren't allowed to bargain over pay, pensions, or compensation, the only things that a TSA union could bargain over are performance evaluations and workplace practices—which are by definition security related.
Then of course it became clear that TSA unions would indeed try to bargain over security performance, and soon afterward union representatives tried to defend deadbeat screeners in Honolulu. And now they're doing it again in Florida, trying to fight the proposed disciplining of the front-line screeners who either didn't do their jobs. TSA higher-ups are promising to "consider any challenges raised by the employees." Surprise!
We can't wait to find out what the unions have to say about the new bribery scandal.
[Photo: WINK News]
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