TSA officers’ commemoration comes with warning against privatization

September 25, 2026 by

U.S. Rep. Betty McCollum joins AFGE Local 899’s commemoration of the 9/11 attack.As Transportation Security Adminis-tration agents at Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport commemorated the 25th anniversary of 9/11 last month, union leaders made a point of warning against new attempts by the Trump administration to privatize U.S. airport security.

American Federation of Government Employees Local 899 held its observance on the mezzanine level of Terminal 1, perched above the ticketing counters. Two members of Minnesota’s congressional delegation, Reps. Betty McCollum and Kelly Morrison, joined the event, as did a representative of the Metropolitan Airports Commission.

Speakers mourned the lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001, and they reflected on the role TSA workers have played in protecting the nation’s airways from other attacks since then.

Local 899 Secretary Emily Woods was a child when the attacks took place, but she now works as a transportation security officer at MSP, serving in the agency created by Congress after 9/11 to standardize passenger screenings in the nation’s commercial airports.

“I may have been too young to understand Sept. 11 as it happened, but I understand its significance today,” Woods said. “Every time I put on my TSA uniform, I carry forward the responsibility that came from that day.”

“Every day, transportation security officers carry out that important mission,” Local 899 President Sharif Mehanna said. “They identify prohibited items, they respond to evolving threats and they protect millions of passengers – often under difficult conditions and without receiving the recognition they deserve.”

Difficult conditions have been all too common for TSA workers during the second Trump administration. They were forced to work without pay during extended Department of Homeland Security shutdowns, and Trump’s DHS appointees have sought to strip TSA officers of their union contract – a move AFGE has challenged in federal court.

Now, the administration is acting on a secretly devised plan, TSA Gold+, to privatize passenger screening at some airports. The agency recently informed AFGE of its intention to launch the program, which puts private contractors in charge of passenger screening and the screening technology itself, at three airports next year: Tampa, Fla.; Charleston, S.C.; and Des Moines, Iowa.

At MSP Airport, union leaders and federal lawmakers called the privatization scheme a dangerous departure from the system that has worked to protect travelers in the 25 years since 9/11.

Morrison said she opposes any effort to “change airport security that does not include input from the real experts, TSA employees.” McCollum agreed.

“I fly in and out of a lot of airports, and every airport is different,” McCollum said. “But the one thing I know is consistent is the professionalism and the training (of TSA officers). If this starts being privatized, it’s going to be scattered all over. You can come in with the lowest contract? That’s not who I want watching out for my constituents when they fly.”

Local 899 Treasurer Neal Gosman said privatization threatens to undermine TSA officers’ healthcare and pension benefits and their wage standards. But it would also come at a price to accountability, which officers take seriously.

“It takes years to get someone trained up fully; to replace us all with a privatized workforce would be a tremendous loss to federal security,” Gosman said. “The message that we learned after 9/11 is that we aren’t just here to do airport security, we’re here to do national security. That is the oath that we take as federal employees, and we do that work every day.”

– Michael Moore, Union Advocate editor

Filed Under: Community, Politics Tagged With: , , , , ,

Unions decry Trump shutdown, urge health care fix

October 21, 2025 by

SEIU Healthcare Minnesota and Iowa member Tametria Johnson worries about the impact that cuts to Medicaid and expiring ACA subsidies will have on her family.

Using public-service workers as political pawns, President Donald Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress allowed the federal government to shut down Oct. 1 rather than negotiate with Senate Democrats over a mounting health care crisis.

As the shutdown extends into a fourth week, over 750,000 federal workers are locked out, furloughed or working without pay.

Trump and administration officials have made no attempt to hide their intent to use federal workers as leverage in the standoff. The president called it an “unprecedented opportunity” to slash payroll, and thousands of workers across multiple federal agencies had received reduction-in-force notices by mid-October.

The administration also floated a memo arguing furloughed workers were not entitled to back pay, flouting a law passed after the government shut down for 35 days in 2019.

Unions, led by the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), swiftly challenged both the firings and the memo, winning a temporary restraining order to block the reductions in force and threatening another lawsuit if the administration withholds back pay.

Still, the strain on federal workers and their families increases with each day the shutdown drags on, AFGE District 8 Vice President Ruark Hotopp said. District 8 represents over 19,000 federal workers in Minnesota and four other states.

“To be used as political footballs, to shut down the government and hold us hostage while many of our members are going without a paycheck – in many cases while they still perform their work – it’s just frustrating and maddening,” Hotopp, an immigration officer on leave while he works for his union, said. “People are feeling a lot of anxiety, a lot of uncertainty.

“But it’s par for the course with what we’ve been dealing with since January, with DOGE and (Office of Management and Budget Director) Russ Vought and Elon Musk, and agencies refusing to recognize our union contracts.”

Holding out for health care fix

While AFGE and other federal workers’ unions are calling for an immediate end to the shutdown, other labor unions have ramped up pressure on Trump and Republicans to negotiate a health-care fix with Senate Democrats as part of a spending bill.

Already, hospitals are bracing for a $900 billion cut to Medicaid coverage in the tax and spending bill Trump signed into law July 4, which will force providers to absorb billions in unpaid care costs.

Adding to the crisis, Trump and Republicans are set on allowing some tax credits that help people afford insurance through the Affordable Care Act expire Dec. 31. Over 22 million Americans, access the credits to make their health coverage more affordable.

MNsure, Minnesota’s ACA exchange, noted the impact of the expiring credits as it released rates and coverage options in advance of open enrollment beginning Nov. 1. Nearly 90,000 Minnesotans will pay more for coverage – on average, about $177 more each month – and another 20,000 will lose all financial assistance.

“These cuts would be a snowball that would be awful for so many families,” home care worker Tametria Johnson said during a press conference called by her union, SEIU Healthcare Minnesota and Iowa, on Day 1 of the shutdown.

Johnson works as a caregiver for her developmentally disabled adult daughter, a service reimbursed by Medicaid funding, but she gets her own health coverage through the ACA exchange. She worries her family’s Medicaid benefits are in jeopardy at a time when her premiums are set to increase by over 20%.

“Many of us live paycheck to paycheck,” Johnson said. “When costs go up … something has to go – groceries, medicine, gas to go to work or appointments, utilities, cell phone. It’s very scary.”

Make a deal or take a stand?

Labor leaders and Senate Democrats have acknowledged the tension between fighting to lower health care costs for union members like Johnson and getting federal workers back on the job. But they agree that the blame lands squarely on the White House.

“Our livelihoods should not be used as pawns or bargaining chips, whether it is threatening one set of workers after another, canceling construction projects, or jacking up electricity prices on top of higher health insurance premiums,” AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler wrote in a letter to Trump sent Oct. 7.

“We implore you to meet with the leaders of the House and Senate to find a solution that funds the government, fixes the health care crisis and puts working people first.”

One thing AFGE’s Hotopp is sure of, he said, is that the Trump administration’s attacks on federal workers won’t end when the government reopens. He recalled the argument that convinced enough Senate Democrats to sign off on a Republican budget the last time Congress reached the brink of a shutdown, in March.

“What we heard then was, ‘We had to make a deal to save your jobs,’” Hotopp said. “Then we watched DOGE rip through our staffing, watched agencies rip away our unions. It didn’t save any jobs.

“To insinuate that if there weren’t a shutdown that they wouldn’t terminate people? That’s simply not the truth.”

– Michael Moore, Union Advocate editor

Filed Under: Labor Voices, Politics Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Local lawmakers, unions scramble to support federal workers harmed by Trump cuts

April 25, 2025 by

Members of the Minnesota Association of Professional Employees (MAPE) held informational picketing in support of about 170 employees at the Department of Health who have been laid off as a result of federal funding cuts.

Unions, local lawmakers and community volunteers are acting to support Minnesotans ensnared by the Trump administration’s reckless attempt to gut the federal workforce.

“If the Trump administration turned you away, Minnesota wants you,” Gov. Tim Walz said, announcing a new one-stop website with referrals to state employment openings, resources for veterans and tips for accessing state unemployment insurance benefits.

DFL legislators, meanwhile, have introduced bills that would bolster the safety net for workers navigating the federal chaos.

One measure would guarantee unemployment benefits for workers who accepted the so-called “fork-in-the-road offer” from Trump megadonor Elon Musk, head of the administration’s “DOGE” team.

Jacob Romans, president of American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) Local 3699, which represents 2,300 VA hospital workers, praised the proposal. He called it “legitimate” to question whether DOGE and the Trump administration would honor terms of the buyout through Sept. 30, as originally promised.

Another bill would establish a relocation bonus program for veterans who have been fired by the Trump administration, incentivizing public employees to continue their public service in Minnesota. Veterans make up roughly 30% of the federal government’s workforce.

Some House DFLers are also pushing a measure to tack on a 13-week extension of unemployment benefits for government workers whose federal benefits expire.

“We want to make sure that these dedicated public servants stay here in Minnesota and are not forced to leave their communities and find work elsewhere,” Rep. Pete Johnson of Duluth said. “But the goal is clear – make the job unbearable for workers so that they leave.”

“What we are trying to do is absorb some of the shock and the impact of the Trump-Musk actions, and protect Minnesota’s economy,” Rep. Greenman of Minneapolis said. “Right now our job is to protect Minnesota with the power that we have.”

Unions, too, have stepped up their advocacy on behalf of federal workers. As their attorneys continue fighting Trump’s war on the federal workforce in court, unions announced a new partnership that aims to connect individuals impacted by the cuts with free legal support.

The Rise Up Federal Workers Legal Defense Network, backed by the AFL-CIO and several federal government unions, put out the call for attorneys to volunteer their services to advocate for workers who have seen their rights violated – and careers upended – by the Trump administration’s recklessness.

“Attacks on federal workers are attacks on all workers and on the essential services that our communities rely on daily,” AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler said. “Getting these workers the justice they deserve in the face of this onslaught will take all of us.”

Anna Chu, executive director of We The Action, an organization that connects volunteer attorneys with community initiatives, said lawyers are “uniquely positioned” to assist federal employees in this moment.

“This is a moment for lawyers to support the federal workers who serve us all,” Chu added.

Tens of thousands of federal workers have been laid off, put on administrative leave or left their jobs since Trump took office. Over 18,000 federal employees reside in Minnesota.

– Michael Moore, Union Advocate editor

Filed Under: Community, Organizing Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Union members sound off on impacts of DOGE cuts to federal workforce

April 10, 2025 by

USDA worker Skye Carpenter sounds the alarm on the Trump administration’s reckless layoffs and what they will mean for Minnesota farmers, the nation’s agricultural industry and the integrity of its food supply.

While members of Congress went on recess the week of March 17, Minnesota’s labor movement went to work.

Union members showed up at Republican congressional offices across the state to support federal workers and services in the crosshairs of unelected billionaire and Trump megadonor Elon Musk’s “DOGE” team.

The message to lawmakers, Minnesota AFL-CIO President Bernie Burnham said, is that federal workers are real people, not lines on a balance sheet.

The statewide labor federation worked with the American Federation of Government Employees to coordinate actions at offices of all four Republican members of Minnesota’s congressional delegation during the recess week.

[More town hall meetings with lawmakers are scheduled for the upcoming congressional recess. Click here to RSVP.]

Republicans so far have shown little interest in oversight of Musk, and they showed little interest, too, in hearing from federal workers impacted by the chaos that DOGE has sewn across federal agencies. While some union members at the actions were able to meet with lawmakers’ staff, Burnham said, others were “shown the door.”

During the same week, AFGE members aired their concerns at a Capitol press conference in St. Paul, warning that the damage DOGE has done in the first two months of Trump’s second term could take years to fix.

Skye Carpenter, an employee in the U.S. Department of Agriculture and member of AFGE Local 3748, struggled to suppress her anger as she described the work done by employees laid off from her office, Agricultural Research Services.

Those fired include leaders, scientists and support staff who work “hand in hand with farmers,” she said, to implement scientific research into agricultural practices. She called the cuts “an attack on every farmer, every consumer and every community that depends on research we conduct.”

“The farmers who rely on our cutting-edge research to combat drought, disease and pests are left without answers,” Carpenter said. “The scientists working to protect against livestock illnesses that could devastate our agricultural economy are silenced. The taxpayers funding this research are robbed of the progress and innovation they were promised.”

Jacob Romans, a registered nurse at the VA Hospital in Minneapolis and president of AFGE Local 3669, said DOGE layoffs at Veterans Affairs have nothing to do with efficiency.

“Let me be very clear,” Romans said. “DOGE is run by very unserious people making very serious decisions.”

Earlier in the month, a leaked memo showed the Trump administration planned to slash the VA’s staffing to 2019 levels. That would mean cutting nearly 80,000 jobs, or 20% of the department’s staff. Romans estimated the local VA would lose 1,300 workers.

“We were already short staffed before 2019,” he said. “This would devastate our workforce… I have nurses right now who are working 16-hour days. We’re being mandated to because we don’t have the staff.

“It is imperative that Congress exercise their ability to halt these layoffs and prevent the dismantling of the VA care system.”

– Michael Moore, Union Advocate editor

Filed Under: Labor Voices, Politics Tagged With: , , , , ,

TSA officers say Trump’s move to terminate their contract about fear, not safety

April 10, 2025 by

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

Filed Under: Organizing, Union Events Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Unions warn Trump-aligned ‘Project 2025’ puts target on workers’ rights

October 2, 2024 by

Bart Andersen, executive director of AFSCME Council 5, speaks during a rally against Project 2025.

Project 2025, the 920-page playbook for former President Donald Trump’s potential return to the White House, spells disaster for union members, Minnesota labor leaders and activists warned yesterday.

“Project 2025 is about one thing; it’s about dismantling the rights we’ve fought for, taking away our power and leaving us vulnerable,” AFSCME Council 65 Executive Director Shannon Douvier said during a rally outside the Capitol in St. Paul. “We cannot afford to let this happen.”

Written by a team of former Trump administration officials and funded by the conservative Heritage Foundation, Project 2025 provides a sprawling but detailed blueprint for how a second Trump presidency would wield power.

Unions, labor standards and collective bargaining would be targets of that power, according to an analysis of the document by the AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest labor federation.

The AFL-CIO highlighted several objectives that would undercut workers’ power at the bargaining table and stifle their voice in the workplace, including a complete ban on public employee unions like AFSCME (the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees), Education Minnesota and the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), which organized the rally in St. Paul.

“The tools we use to keep our workplaces safe, our families healthy, our standard of living and … the equipment we need to get home at night to our families safe and sound are all at risk,” AFSCME Council 5 Executive Director Bart Andersen said. “Our unions and our contracts bring us stability and peace of mind, and right now it’s all on the chopping block with Project 2025.”

The document calls on the Trump administration to defund federal services, eliminate agencies like the Department of Education and scrap civil service rules so that federal workers could be more easily replaced with MAGA loyalists.

Mechell Snider, a member of AFGE Local 899 who works as a TSA agent at Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport, said voters need to “stop Project 2025 in its tracks” to “protect an apolitical federal workforce” that is loyal to the Constitution, not to Trump.

“We need a federal workforce that has the right to unionize, to bargain in good faith and to show up to do a job safely, for the sole benefit of the American people,” Snider added.

Project 2025 takes aim at private-sector workers’ rights, too, calling for a ban on union organizing by card check, which speeds up organizing drives by allowing employers to recognize majority support for a union voluntarily, without a National Labor Relations Board election.

Project 2025 also supports allowing employers to push decertification campaigns at any time, making it easier to wiggle out of their obligations to workers in the middle of a contract.

Project 2025 also takes aim at union workers’ wages – Building Trades workers, in particular. It calls for a repeal of the Davis-Bacon Act, which requires construction companies to pay prevailing wages to workers on federally funded projects.

Additionally, the document calls on federal agencies to stop bargaining project labor agreements – so-called “PLAs,” which set the terms and conditions of employment for construction projects before bidding begins – with unions. That would open the federal bidding process to low-wage, low-road contractors.

Other provisions in Project 2025 would be bad for union and non-union workers alike, from eliminating overtime protections to allowing states to set their own minimum wage below the federal rate. Child labor laws, unemployment insurance programs, the Occupational Health and Safety Administration – Trump’s allies aim to weaken them all, according to Project 2025.

Education Minnesota Vice President Monica Byron, an elementary-school teacher, said Project 2025 is a game plan for making it harder for workers to get ahead and stacking the deck in favor of Wall Street and wealthy CEOs.

“We have a choice to make in this election,” Byron said. “We can support the freedom to come together in union and bargain for better lives and better schools, or we can choose the MAGA agenda of Project 2025 that would give greedy corporations even more control over our lives and decimate unions and public education.”

Learn more about Project 2025’s impact on workers at betterinaunion.org.

– Michael Moore, Union Advocate editor

Filed Under: Labor Voices, Politics Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Local veterans, workers call out union busting at VA

November 11, 2020 by

Workers at the VA Hospital in Minneapolis, members of AFGE Local 1969, rallied for a fair contract Oct. 29, with support from activists in the local chapter of Veterans for Peace.

Local veterans and union members who staff the Minneapolis VA Hospital have been publicly calling out the Trump administration in recent months for understaffing in VA facilities and a string of attacks on VA workers’ rights.

Members of the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents about 260,000 VA workers, have rallied and demonstrated relentlessly at the busy intersection of Hiawatha Avenue and Highway 62, near the hospital. Their events are drawing support from activists in the Minnesota chapter of Veterans for Peace.

Both veterans and workers say they are worried privatization is the ultimate goal Trump and VA Secretary Robert Wilkie have in mind.

“It’s just another effort to destabilize the VA because, ultimately, they want to privatize the VA,” AFGE District 8 Vice President Gregg James said. “There are trillions of dollars available if millions of veterans have to go downtown to ge their care.”

On the campaign trail, President-elect Joe Biden promised a course correction at the VA. He committed to begin filling the estimated 50,000 vacant positions at the agency and to restoring workers’ union protections.

But much of the damage done by Trump can’t be undone on inauguration day, workers say.

By executive order and federal rulemaking, Wilkie and the president have chipped away at workers’ bargaining power. The measures restrict workers’ access to union representation and limit their eligibility for union membership. A new proposal, James said, would bar unions from collecting attorneys’ fees from the government as part of a judgment for unpaid wages.

At the same time, contract negotiations between the agency and the AFGE have dragged on for what feels like “forever” to Christine Schoenbechler, a food service worker at Minneapolis VA.

“They won’t come to the table,” the vice president of AFGE Local 1969 said. “Wilkie is not making management negotiate with the union. They’ve just walked away.”

The agency’s contract proposals would make it easier for managers to fire VA workers and strip workers from having a say in shift changes, pay scales and more. Union members say the changes would make it easier to silence workers who blow the whistle on abuse, discrimination or unsafe conditions — of particular concern during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Our benefits and protections, everything is at stake,” Schoenbechler said. “It’s unreal. It’s unbelievable. It’s like something I’ve never seen.”

Rather than engaging in a give and take at the bargaining table or with a federal mediator, James said, VA negotiators are pushing their demands to an impasse panel, stacked with presidential appointees.

“Normally, the impasse panel will only take a case after the federal mediator has made sure both parties have done their work,” James said. “It’s union busting, right out in the open.”

James said the AFGE urges supporters to contact their members of Congress and ask them to call on President Trump and Secretary Wilkie to get serious about contract talks at the VA.

“Because we’re on the verge of losing it,” he said.

Filed Under: Labor Voices, Union Events Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Senators push back against Trump’s union-busting

March 11, 2020 by

Minnesota Senators Tina Smith (L) and Amy Klobuchar

In his administration’s latest swipe at federal unions, President Trump last month gave Defense Secretary Mark Esper unprecedented authority to strip collective bargaining rights from nearly 750,000 civilian workers at the agency.

Democratic senators, including Minnesota’s Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith, urged Esper in a letter last week “to exercise great restraint” with his new authority and avoid setting a “dangerous precedent.”

Smith, a member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, said Democrats are committed to making sure the Department of Defense (DOD) continues bargaining with civilian workers, as it has for the last 60 years.

“As union members know, sometimes you have to fight to win fair treatment,” Smith said. “My colleagues and I are right there fighting with (union members), and that’s why we’re pushing back on the administration’s efforts to undermine collective bargaining.”

DOD workers potentially impacted by the new policy include janitors, firefighters, food-service workers, teachers, depot maintenance technicians, welders and other professionals. Their collective bargaining rights, Trump claimed in a document published in the Federal Register, could be “incompatible” with the agency’s “national security mission.”

Democratic senators aren’t buying it.

“There’s simply no evidence that this is true,” Smith said. “In fact, my Democratic colleagues and I believe having a unionized workforce actually enhances the security of our nation.”

In their letter to Esper, the senators point out that federal unions have helped expose health and safety hazards at the DOD, and rid the agency of “waste, fraud and abuse on the part of contractors.”

Federal employees gained the right to join a union and bargain collectively in 1962, when President Kennedy issued an executive order. Presidents since then have used executive power to narrow or, sometimes, expand the pool of federal workers eligible to join unions.

But a White House memo leaked last fall revealed Trump was weighing a much more drastic use of executive power: purging the federal workforce of unions altogether.

“Government unions impede the efficiency of federal operations and direct the government to put the interests of government employees first,” the memo reads. “Curtailing collective bargaining in government serves the public good.”

Nearly 500,000 DOD workers are currently covered by union contracts, including 300,000 represented by the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE). Everett Kelley, AFGE’s national president, called it insulting for the Trump administration to suggest the bargaining rights of civilian employees, who support the military during wars and other conflicts, somehow threaten national security.

“More than a third of these workers are veterans, and it’s an insult to these employees’ military service and their continued service to their country for the administration to claim that their union affiliation somehow threatens our national security,” Kelley said.

In their letter to Esper, senators note that collective bargaining has helped establish the department as an attractive employer, with fair wages and benefits, and attract highly skilled workers.

“In short, we believe that the Department’s unionized workforce has enhanced our security, not detracted from it,” the senators wrote. “President Trump’s Memorandum arbitrarily and needlessly threatens this positive relationship.”

Filed Under: Labor Voices, Politics Tagged With: , , , , , ,

McCollum, Craig hear workers’ shutdown stories – and safety concerns

January 19, 2019 by

U.S. Reps. Angie Craig (L) and Betty McCollum meet with federal workers at the St. Paul Labor Center.

Eventually, the federal government shutdown will reach a tipping point, federal employees told U.S. Reps. Angie Craig and Betty McCollum in a roundtable discussion arranged by their unions at the St. Paul Labor Center Friday.

What that tipping point ends up being is a question keeping many around the table awake at night.

“I’m very afraid,” Erin Phelps, an air traffic controller at Minneapolis St. Paul airport told the DFL congresswomen. “Our systems are being degraded by this shutdown, and it’s scary.”

Air traffic controllers, members of NATCA, are being forced to work without pay during the shutdown, as are TSA agents and officers at federal prisons in Minnesota, members of the American Federation of Government Employees. They missed their first paychecks last Friday, and it appears likely they will miss another next week.

That means workers like Phelps, whose husband is an air traffic controller too, are dipping into their savings to pay for day care, gas, housing, health care co-pays and other costs – or taking out short-term loans.

The mounting stress and plummeting morale are making their workplaces less safe, workers warned, both for themselves and the public they serve. “I’m becoming more convinced someone is going to die in our prisons,” said one corrections officer, who drove from Rochester to attend the meeting.

McCollum, a DFLer who represents Minnesota’s 4th Congressional District, blasted President Donald Trump and Senate Republicans for dragging out the shutdown to gain leverage in their efforts to build a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico.

“We all took the same oath of office to protect and defend the United States,” McCollum said. “This is not protecting and defending… This is putting politics over country.”

Craig, a DFLer newly elected to the state’s 2nd Congressional District, noted the twisted irony that Republicans’ crusade to make the nation more safe with a wall is, according to workers in our airports and prisons, having the opposite effect.

“It makes no sense to me,” Craig told workers in the meeting, hosted by the St. Paul Regional Labor Federation. “Every Democrat I talk to is up for a conversation about border security, but we cannot keep holding federal workers hostage.”

Craig and McCollum want Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to call a vote on budget bills negotiated in December, when Republicans controlled both chambers of Congress. “It’s certainly not the budget I would have wanted, but I’m willing to support it” to end the shutdown, McCollum said.

A veto-proof majority of senators supported the budget, too – until McConnell pulled the bill in deference to Trump’s last-minute demand for $5 billion in wall funding.

Craig recalled her first vote as a member of Congress for “exactly the same bill the Senate passed three weeks before I got there.” She added: “The Senate needs to take up its bill again and end this.”

Furloughed workers from other government agencies, including the IRS, HUD and the FDA, also attended the meeting. They offered McCollum and Craig a litany of examples of how the shutdown is impacting Americans, from blocked access to tax forms needed to fill out financial aid documents to government-backed housing loans caught in limbo.

Workers also described mounting economic pressures as the shutdown drags on. “I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place,” one HUD employee said. “My lease is coming due, and I can’t sign a new lease because I don’t have any income. It’s appalling. It feels like we’ve been made invisible.”

To make matters worse, federal employees are barred from accepting certain gifts, making it difficult for labor organizations and other agencies to funnel support directly to them during this time of hardship.

St. Paul RLF President Bobby Kasper said the federation’s nonprofit arm, which provides emergency assistance to union members during strikes, lockouts or other financial crises, is seeking legal advice about how to make sure the labor community can provide assistance in solidarity with federal workers for as long as the shutdown lasts.

“The people impacted most by this shutdown didn’t go into public service to get rich, and they don’t deserve to be treated like a political football,” Kasper said. “The labor community is going to stand with our brothers and sisters in AFGE and other federal unions, and it’s reassuring to know we have friends in Congress who will do the same.”

Filed Under: Labor Voices, Union Events Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Smith pledges to fight for federal workers as shutdown hits home

January 11, 2019 by

TSA agent Celia Hahn speaks at a press conference inside MSP Airport with Sen. Tina Smith.

The political staredown in Washington is maddening. Its human toll grows more heartbreaking each day.

U.S. Sen. Tina Smith stood at a podium in Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport today holding a letter from Joseph, an air traffic controller from Lakeville. He sent the senator a photo of his newborn son, born 10 weeks early on the 10th day of the federal government shutdown.

Joseph told Smith there is just one Twin Cities hospital that provides care to babies born so early, and it’s not in his current insurance network. Because the government is shut down, Joseph can’t switch plans. He can’t apply for paid family leave, either.

“I take solace in what matters most,” Joseph wrote. “Oliver is getting a little stronger and a little closer to home every day.”

The government appears no closer to reopening, however.

Today 800,000 federal employees missed their first paycheck since the shutdown began. President Trump marked the occasion by holding firm to his position – one he has said he’s willing to maintain for months – that the government won’t reopen unless he gets $5 billion in funding for a wall along the nation’s border with Mexico.

Smith, who met with impacted federal workers at the airport today, called on Senate Republicans to stand up to Trump and put people before the president’s political stunts.

The Republican-controlled Senate unanimously passed a short-term funding package last month to keep the government open. But Trump refused to sign it, opting instead to leverage a government shutdown for his unpopular wall.

“We should not be using the people standing behind me as bargaining chips,” Smith says.

Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell knows a veto-proof majority of senators supported keeping the government open without funding for the wall, but so far he has refused to stand up to Trump.

“All that has to happen is for Mitch McConnell to bring those bills forward,” Smith said. “This shutdown could end as soon as tomorrow if we could come together and appreciate that we should not be using the people standing behind me as bargaining chips.”

The people behind Smith were a handful of the estimated 5,470 federal employees in Minnesota either furloughed or working without pay during the shutdown.

Some are tightening their belts, tapping their savings or taking out loans to cover daily costs until they get paid again. Workers at the federal prison in Rochester have opened a food bank to support each other during the shutdown, corrections officer William Axford said.

“The things that would normally be inconveniences, like car repairs or maintenance, become back-breakers,” Axford, an officer in American Federation of Government Employees Local 3947, added.

Other federal workers are looking for new jobs. Celia Hahn, a TSA agent with 16 years of experience at MSP Airport, said her agency already faces a shortage of workers. In fact, management has announced plans to hold a hiring fair later this month.

Letter and photo received by Smith from a Lakeville air traffic controller hit hard by the shutdown.

Working long hours, short-staffed, for no pay takes a toll on workplace morale – and public safety, Hahn added.

“It’s definitely not going to make travel more secure the long this goes on,”the president of AFGE Local 899 said. “And that’s not because of people not doing their jobs. It’s because of people just not being here.”

TSA agents and corrections officers are on the low end of the federal pay scales. Hahn said TSA agents’ wages start at around $17 per hour. Sandstone prison guard Mike Weber said new hires make less than $20 in his shop.

Smith has signed onto a bill that would make sure another group of low-paid workers impacted by the shutdown – contractor employees – are made whole with back pay when the impasse ends, something that has not generally happened, according to the senator.

President Trump has said he can “relate” to federal workers and contractor employees going without pay, suggesting they are able to “make adjustments.”

But those adjustments come at a price for many, including Weber and his wife, who also works at the central-Minnesota correctional facility. Weber, president of AFGE Local 683, said they are one of nine couples on the payroll.

“Savings don’t last very long when neither one of us is getting an income,” he said. “We can’t tell our 4-year-old we can’t afford mac-and-cheese; we’ve got to keep putting gas in our car to go to work. So I think we’re going to have to look at taking out loans, and that costs anywhere from 5 to 10 percent interest.

“I think we’re going to have to start planning for the next shutdown when this one ends. That’s pretty sad.”

Filed Under: Labor Voices, Politics Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,
Next Page»