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: , , , , , ,

Proposal would allow Minnesota Uber, Lyft drivers to unionize

March 10, 2025 by

Dawit Kassa (R) spoke during a Capitol press conference on a bill that would allow Uber and Lyft drivers to unionize. (SEIU photo)

Two labor-endorsed state lawmakers announced plans last month to introduce legislation that would give drivers in Minnesota the right to unionize and bargain collectively with ride-hailing apps like Uber and Lyft.

Drivers in the Twin Cities have been organizing in recent years to push local and state officials to address low pay, safety concerns and a lack of transparency in their industry. State lawmakers responded last year with a bill establishing a new minimum wage and other guarantees.

But Dawit Kassa, a driver who served on Gov. Tim Walz’s task force to offer recommendations for the new law, said it doesn’t do enough to level the playing field between the ride-hailing companies and their drivers.

“No law is going to address all of the issues we are facing from these companies,” Kassa said. “We need a union. We need a seat at the table so we can ensure this industry works for us.”

Kassa was among roughly 20 Uber and Lyft drivers at a Capitol press conference Feb. 25. Most were wearing the Service Employees union’s trademark purple shirts, and SEIU Local 26 President Greg Nammacher said the union would support any Uber and Lyft drivers looking to organize.

Lead authors Rep. Samakab Hussein (D-St. Paul) and Sen. Zaynab Mohamed (D-Minneapolis) said they are modeling their bills after a historic ballot measure approved by Massachusetts voters in November.

The Massachusetts law establishes a process for drivers to organize a union and, if successful, bargain one contract with all the apps licensed to operate in the state, known as “sectoral bargaining.”

Drivers, like most other workers in the gig economy, are classified by law as independent contractors, making them ineligible to form a union without a special process like the one in Massachusetts.

Under the proposal from Hussein and Mohamed, pro-union drivers would need to sign up at least 25% of the potential bargaining unit – open to anyone who has completed 100 rides in the previous quarter – before contract talks could begin.

Any tentative agreement would need approval from a majority of voting union members and from the commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Labor before taking effect.

The proposal also establishes an arbitration process if the union and ride-hailing apps fail to reach an agreement within six months of opening talks.

Hussein said that stories from Uber and Lyft drivers confirmed that they need collective bargaining to address their shared concerns around fare transparency and pay for time spent waiting for a job.

And despite safeguards in the new state law, drivers continue to report being deactivated from their Uber or Lyft accounts – making it impossible for them to work – due to rider feedback, without getting an opportunity to respond in their defense.

“Without a voice, these problems are going to continue to come back to the Legislature,” Local 26’s Nammacher said. “The Legislature does not need to be the HR department for these multimillion-dollar, global corporations like Uber and Lyft,”

“Ride share companies continue to do the bare minimum while making millions,” Hussein added. “It’s time for change.”

Filed Under: Community, Organizing, Politics 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: , , , , , ,