Union Seeks To Organize Transportation Security Workers

[geardaddy]

Solidarity, brothers and sisters!

BOSTON – Since the creation of the Transportation Security Administration – following the attacks of September 11, 2001 – unionists have been trying to organize TSA workers; something the Bush administration and their Republican allies in Congress vigorously opposed.

The election of Barack Obama, a Democrat and supporter of labor organizing and collective bargaining, has energized union activists who will be holding rallies and press briefings for the media at airports around the country on Friday.

At Logan Airport in Boston, members of the American Federation for Government Employees Local 2617, which serves TSA officers and employees in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, along with supporters from the MA AFL-CIO, will urge Congress to pass legislation lifting an eight year ban on collective bargaining by TSA workers.

In a phone interview Thursday, AFGE Local 2617 President A.J. Castilla said “we protect 600 million people a year, and if things are not being done right…we certainly need to be able to communicate with the people who run this agency.”

Union organizers blame Arizona Senator John McCain for promoting the ban on collective negotiations in 2001 and more recently, Republican South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint, for blocking approval of Erroll Southers for the post of Assistant Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security and head of the TSA.

Southers supports union efforts to win bargaining rights for members who work for the agency.

Full story here: http://www.openmediaboston.org/node/1091

[geardaddy]

1. kick

[NNN0LHI]

2. I would rather have a union professional than some low paid scab doing my security

Thats for damn sure.

Don

[Peace Patriot]

3. There is no end to the mischief that 'TRADE SECRET' vote counting has done,

for instance, putting people like Jim DeMint in Congress--South Carolina having one of THE most non-transparent voting systems in the country--and that's saying something, because they are ALL relatively non-transparent, ALL run by a handful of private, rightwing corporations, ALL infested with 'TRADE SECRET' code, and none with adequate audit/recount controls.

Who put this first-term senator in charge of U.S. Latin American foreign policy? He is tight with the fascists who overturned Honduran democracy, with Obama seeming powerless to prevent it.

Who put this first-term, non-transparently 'elected' senator in charge of U.S. labor policy?

I don't think the answer in either case is the voters of South Carolina.

[NNN0LHI]

4. kick

[NNN0LHI]

5. Boy if we can't get 5 recs on this one we are fucked

People happily cut their own throats trying to screw over their fellow American workers.

This is why the only jobs left for our kids are at Walmart and McDonalds these days if they are lucky enough to get one of those.

Don

[blondeatlast]

8. Too late; I tried to be rec 6. Sad, indeed. nt

[mascarax]

6. K&R

Makes sense to me! (Although that's my standard response when I read "...blame...John McCain...and...Jim DeMint..."

[geardaddy]

7. Thanks for the recs and kicks.

[Kingofalldems]

9. Uh oh---Southern aristocrats and their freeper serfs won't like this one

[AuntPatsy]

10. Kicking, we need our unions back, without them, we are done for...

I am numbed by those that believe that unions are out to destroy us, they forget, they are us, we are them..and the union was formed to work for us and for them even if they don't realize it yet..

What will it take for the average americans to wake up again? Outsourcing is the new norm and like it or not, the only jobs left that pay viable living wages will soon be far and few between, the unions did not do the outsourcing but corporations did, the unions do not cut pay but the corporations do, had the unions not lost so much during the republican years we would not be in the mess we are now facing...and there is plenty of blame to go around but standing around finding those to blame will be nothing more than a waste of time..

Its time to fight and the unions fight for those who cannot fight for themselves..they are all we have left..

[geardaddy]

11. kick