Shameful attack on TSA screeners

Roger Wicker

A U.S. Senator from Mississippi who views American workers with contempt is trying to take away the TSA's limited bargaining rights just days after they were granted.

Republican Roger Wicker introduced an amendement to a Federal Aviation Administration budget bill that would forbid TSA employees from exercising their right to collectively bargain. Wicker said in a statement

"The Obama administration's actions today to move forward on unionizing our TSA workforce with collective bargaining rights could hamper our national security."

(Note: What's hampered our national security in the past has been leadership asleep at the switch, but we've never heard Wicker complain about that.)

The TSA on Friday had finally granted the 45,000 airport screeners the right to bargain for certain working conditions like shifts and assignments. Many are members of government unions (either the American Federation of Government Employees or the National Treasury Employees Union), but they've been denied their right to bargain collectively since the TSA was created right after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. 

Wicker's amendment is just another shameful attack on  government workers. But here's what's really shameful: You have to be a U.S. citizen to be a TSA screener. But you don't have to be a U.S. company to get a federal contract worth hundreds of millions of dollars to administer benefits and payroll for those U.S. citizens (who pay the taxes that the foreign corporation doesn't).

A company called Accenture used to be part of Arthur Andersen before Andersen's involvement in the Enron scandal forced it out of business. Accenture moved to Bermuda, then Ireland to avoid paying U.S. taxes. And yet Accenture received $662 million in federal contracts, mostly from the TSA, between Oct. 1, 2001 and Sept. 30, 2002. That was just the beginning. The now-Irish company received a number of contract extensions. Then in 2008, reports Defense Daily, the TSA awarded Accenture a

...$55.9 million contract to help the agency take on passenger watch list matching currently being done by commercial aircraft operators...

It's very hard to understand how U.S. citizens exercising their right to bargain collectively are somehow more of a danger to U.S. security than a foreign corporation managing important aviation security functions.