Trump administration sued for ending union bargaining for TSA officers

By Daniel Wiessner

(Reuters) -The largest federal employee union filed a lawsuit on Thursday seeking to block President Donald Trump's administration from ending collective bargaining for nearly 50,000 Transportation Security Administration officers that staff checkpoints at U.S. airports and other transportation hubs.

The American Federation of Government Employees filed a lawsuit in Seattle, Washington, federal court, claiming the U.S. Department of Homeland Security canceled a bargaining agreement covering TSA officers as retaliation against the union for challenging other Trump administration initiatives.

The lawsuit seeks to block TSA from canceling a seven-year collective bargaining deal, which was enacted last year, and bar DHS from rescinding it again.

"This retaliatory action is in accord with a broader Trump administration policy of terminating contracts in retaliation for protected speech," the AFGE said.

The union pointed to Trump's executive order barring law firm Perkins Coie, which represented the 2016 presidential campaign of Democrat Hillary Clinton, from doing business with federal contractors and denying its lawyers access to government officials and buildings. A judge blocked that order on Wednesday.

The White House and DHS did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Two unions representing flight attendants and other airline workers joined AFGE in the lawsuit.

Because of the sensitive nature of their jobs, TSA officers are not governed by the civil service system and do not have the same rights to unionize and collectively bargain over working conditions as most other federal employees.

During former President Barack Obama's administration, the TSA granted officers the ability to bargain over certain subjects, and former President Joe Biden's administration expanded the scope of bargaining in 2021.

The agency last year reached a new seven-year labor deal with the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal worker union. Workers received enhanced shift trade options, increased allowance for uniforms and the addition of parental bereavement leave and weather and safety leave as part of the agreement.

On February 27, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem rescinded the directives allowing TSA officers to unionize and directed the agency to cancel the bargaining agreement within 90 days. She said the directives were misplaced and “have solely benefited the American Federation of Government Employees at [officers'] expense."

Noem also said she had asked lawyers at DHS to take actions to make it impossible for any future administration to grant TSA workers the right to bargain without action from Congress.

Noem's memo came on the same day that AFGE won a court order barring the Trump administration from ordering agencies to fire recently hired employees, roughly 25,000 of whom have been terminated in recent weeks. The same judge on Thursday ordered six agencies to reinstate thousands of fired employees.

AFGE and the other unions that sued on Thursday said Noem in her memo failed to provide a reasoned explanation for her decision, and that TSA lacks the power to set aside the bargaining agreement.

"Noem does not, and cannot, address the reality of the situation: that AFGE is the chosen representative of transportation security officers and counts a majority of these officers as members," the unions said.

Trump on January 20 forced out TSA administrator David Pekoske, whom he had named to the job in 2017 and was reappointed by Biden. Trump has not yet named a candidate to replace Pekoske.

(Reporting by Daniel Wiessner in Albany, New York, and David Shepardson in Washington, D.C.; Editing by Chris Reese, Alexia Garamfalvi and David Gregorio)