Members of AFGE Local 899 who work as transportation security officers at MSP International Airport held copies of their union contract – terminated by the Trump administration last month – during a press conference.
In a surprise, early-morning announcement March 7, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem stripped collective bargaining rights from 47,000 transportation security officers at airports across the country.
Overnight, TSOs lost their union contract, and officers at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, members of American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) Local 899, said they felt the impact immediately.
Upon arriving to work that morning, Local 899 Secretary Sharif Mehanna was ordered to clean out the office space he and other stewards used for union work, like grievances and arbitration.
Union fliers had been taken down, and managers told workers wearing lanyards with AFGE’s logo to remove them. Some supervisors even confiscated them, Mehanna said.
Several rank-and-file officers at MSP said they have noticed a new glint in their managers’ eyes since Noem’s announcement.
“They’ve been very aggressive,” Mehanna said. “There’s been lots of discipline going on.”
Teresa Jakubowski said she and other TSOs feel “treated like children” since their contract became void, with supervisors pressing issues that seem petty. One recent directive instructed officers to carry their mobile phones in their side pockets and not their back pockets.
The net effect, Mehanna added, is increased fear and distraction – and dwindling morale –among the workers tasked with keeping MSP Airport safe.
“It’s been very difficult to focus on the task in front of us with all of this going on around us,” he said.
But AFGE is fighting back, filing a lawsuit seeking to block the termination of TSOs’ contract.
The union alleges that Noem’s actions were “unconstitutional retaliation” by the Trump administration for AFGE’s advocacy on behalf of thousands of probationary federal workers fired by Elon Musk’s “DOGE” team. In a separate lawsuit, AFGE won a temporary restraining order that deemed many of those firings illegal, derailing DOGE’s efforts.
That restraining order came Feb. 27. It was no coincidence, AFGE President Everett Kelley said, that Noem stripped TSOs of their bargaining rights just eight days later.
“Tearing up a legally negotiated union contract is unconstitutional, retaliatory and will make the TSA experience worse for American travelers,” Kelley said. “These attempts by the administration to silence everyday workers across this country through retaliation and intimidation will not succeed.”
The lawsuit also alleges that terminating TSOs’ bargaining agreement violates their constitutional rights to free speech and due process.
Neal Gosman
Neal Gosman, treasurer of Local 899, which represents about 1,000 TSA workers in Minnesota and the Dakotas, waved a copy of AFGE’s lawsuit – and the U.S. Constitution – during a press conference with other groups of MSP workers March 17. Like many of the agency’s workers, Gosman said, he’s a military veteran.
“Over 50 years ago, when I first put on the uniform, I swore the same oath as when I put on the uniform of TSA: to uphold and defend the Constitution from all enemies foreign and domestic,” he said. “It is time for the current administration in Washington to follow that same oath that they also took.”
As the courts consider whether Noem acted legally, union members at MSP said they worry about access to their sick time, airport parking and other benefits that they bargained into their contract.
They also worry the Trump administration and Republican majorities in Congress will undo a measure approved by the Biden administration that brought TSOs’ pay scale in line with other federal employees, beginning in July 2023. Some officers saw their pay increase by 30%.
Ultimately, Jakubowski said, she fears the administration’s ultimate goal isn’t to bust their union, but to privatize airport security altogether.
“People are upset about everything, but mostly we are worried that this is the beginning of privatization,” she said. “They want to get rid of our union first – and then begin privatizing.”
– Michael Moore, Union Advocate editor
Union Advocate 