ShareThisBy JAMES ROSEN
Tuesday, March 06, 2007
Sen. Jim DeMint hopes to win Tuesday by losing.
DeMint is leading Republican efforts to prevent the nation's airport screeners and other employees of the Transportation Security Administration from gaining collective bargaining rights.
The Senate was scheduled to take up DeMint's amendment Tuesday, which would strip collective bargaining rights for TSA workers from broader legislation implementing all the recommendations of the Sept. 11 commission.
With Democrats holding a 51-49 margin in the Senate, DeMint knows his amendment will likely be defeated.
His goal is to obtain at least 34 votes, which would deprive the Democrats from reaching the two-thirds threshold _ 66 votes _ needed to overturn a veto by President Bush.
"Collective bargaining is a payback to unions with a kickback for lawmakers," DeMint said Monday in an interview.
"Unionizing the 43,000 security screeners at TSA could give labor unions a $17 million annual windfall in the form of new union dues," he said. "This is a hearty payback to the unions for helping Democrats win the past election. These dues can then be kicked back to lawmakers in the form of political contributions without the consent of rank-and-file union members."
DeMint's aides said 92 percent of unions' political campaign contributions have gone to Democrats since 1990.
DeMint organized a letter to Bush last week in which he and 35 other senators _ all Republican _ pledged to vote against overturning a presidential veto of the homeland security legislation because it contains the collective-bargaining provision.
Bush had earlier indicated he would veto the measure if it mandates collective bargaining for TSA employees.
TSA workers already have the right to join the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents 600,000 workers, but only a small number have done so.
John Gage, the union's national president, said TSA employees have the highest injury, illness and attrition rates among all federal workers.
"The safety of the public and the nation is jeopardized," Gage said Monday. "The public will never receive the highly trained, career security official workforce it demands if (screeners) are not granted these fundamental labor rights."
When Congress created the TSA in November 2001 _ two months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks _ lawmakers rejected collective bargaining rights for airports screeners and other employees of the new federal agency.
DeMint spent part of last week on the Senate floor, reminding his peers that lawmakers feared then that such rights would hamstring the new agency's ability to move personnel and change assignments quickly in response to new threats.
Sen. Claire McCaskill, a new Democratic senator from Missouri, is sponsoring a competing amendment, which senators are also expected to vote on Tuesday.
McCaskill's measure would grant the TSA workers collective bargaining rights, but it also would allow the agency's head, the homeland security secretary and other senior officials to waive those rights temporarily during emergencies or in response to the emergence of new security threats.
"This amendment certainly provides plenty of flexibility to address concerns about homeland security," Adrianne Marsh, a spokeswoman for McCaskill, said Monday.
"This amendment provides plenty of flexibility to react and move staff around," Marsh said. "What this comes down to is providing basic worker rights and protections to the 43,000 screeners who help secure our airports."
Screeners and other TSA employees couldn't seek higher pay under McCaskill's amendment, March said, and they would not have the right to strike. The measure would simply give them the same protections already enjoyed by U.S Customs and Border Control agents, and employees of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Among those protections, she said, are the right to appeal suspensions of two weeks or more to an independent arbitration board and stronger protections for whistleblowers who expose wrongdoing.
The broader bill that DeMint and McCaskill seek to amend would implement dozens of recommendations of the Sept. 11 commission that the previous Congress, controlled by Republicans, failed to enact.
Fulfilling the 9/11 panel's suggestions was one of the "Six for '06" legislative goals the Democrats promised during their successful election campaign last fall.
Contact James Rosen at jrosen(at)mcclatchydc.com.)
