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

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Northwest Airlines museum gets parting gift from union retirees

May 5, 2021 by

Mary Sansom presents Bruce Kitt with a check for the airline retirees club’s remaining funds, made out to the Northwest Airlines History Center.

Local airline retirees placed their social club into retirement last month, but not before donating the organization’s remaining funds to a museum preserving of the history of Minneapolis-St. Paul’s longtime union carrier, Northwest Airlines.

Founded in 1976, the Machinists Airline Local 1833 Retired Members Social Club met for the final time April 15 in Bloomington. As the last order of business before gaveling into permanent adjournment, Club President Mary Sansom presented Bruce Kitt, executive director of the Northwest Airlines History Center, with a check made out to the Twin Cities museum.

“Recognizing the history that we’ve all shared and have all been a part of, literally, this is bittersweet,” Kitt told some 30 club members gathered for the final meeting. “But on behalf of the museum, I do thank each and every one of you because each and every one of you are represented in this museum – your history, your names, your faces and your accomplishments.”

The social club, affiliated with Machinists Local Lodge 1833, made the difficult decision to fold as a result of dwindling participation, Sansom said.

The local represents airline workers based at MSP, once a hub of operations for heavily unionized Northwest. But Northwest folded into non-union Delta Air Lines as part of a merger announced in 2008, and Local Lodge 1833’s membership cratered.

“Our ability and resources to enlist new members for the retiree club was gone,” Sansom said. “With our current members growing older, unable to move around as easily as they used to or moving out of state to a warmer climate or passing away, the membership has steadily been going down.

“The remaining members decided it was time to ‘retire’ the social club.”

Local Lodge 1833’s membership peaked at over 10,000 airline workers and retirees in 1988, two years after Northwest merged with Republic Airlines. Most members were Northwest employees, as the airline was headquartered in Eagan.

Local Lodge 1833 represented mechanics, stock clerks, cleaners, flight-kitchen workers, equipment-service and plant-protection workers, and the merger with Republic brought bus drivers, reservation and ticket agents and clerical and office workers into the fold. (Northwest mechanics voted to leave the Machinists union in 2000.)

After their final order of business – transferring their accounts to the museum – retirees took the opportunity to share memories of working at “the Red Tail,” as Northwest was familiarly known in the airline industry.

But it doesn’t have to be the last opportunity for reflection, Kitt said, noting that the Northwest Airlines History Center museum is open to visitors four days a week at the Crowne Plaza Aire MSP Hotel in Bloomington.

“I like to say it’s the only place you can still get a Red Tail fix that Delta can’t touch,” Kitt said.

About the history center 

The Northwest Airlines History Center is dedicated to preserving and presenting the history of all 12 airlines that are part of Northwest’s corporate legacy. Learn more at northwestairlineshistory.org.

The museum is open from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Thursday through Saturday on the third floor of the Crone Plaza Aire MSP hotel, 3 Appletree Square, Bloomington. Admission is free.

The history center also maintains a vast archive of Northwest Airlines history at Flying Cloud Airport in Eden Prairie. Access is by appointment only.

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Outbreak adds urgency to janitors’ push for sick pay

March 4, 2020 by

Ahmed Kahsay, a janitor at MSP Airport, speaks at a press conference called by his union, SEIU Local 26, to discuss the coronavirus, as Local 26 President Iris Altamirano (R) listens.

The coronavirus outbreak has Edith Patiño worried not just about her family’s health, but her ability to pay the bills, too.

After eight years working as a janitor for Minneapolis-based Harvard Maintenance, Patiño gets just four days of earned sick and safe time per year. When she runs out, Patiño said, she often goes to work sick rather than lose hours toward her paycheck.

What would it mean to miss work for two weeks while recovering from COVID-19?

“I am the head of my household,” Patiño said. “It would be detrimental. I would have to ask for government assistance, which I don’t want to do and have never had to do. But if I can’t work, I have no other option.”

Public response to the epidemic has put a grim spotlight on limited access to paid sick time in the U.S., particularly for low-wage workers like Patiño.

According to federal labor-market statistics, 73% of all private-sector workers had access to paid sick leave last year, but less than half of workers in the lowest 25% of earners. Access to paid sick time also was lower among workers in service occupations, who are most likely to interact with the public, making containment of the outbreak more challenging.

As news broke today that two passengers arriving at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport had been asked to self-quarantine, the union representing 4,000 Twin Cities janitors, including about 200 who clean the airport, carried a new sense of urgency into contract negotiations with local cleaning contractors.

Among janitors’ top demands is an increase in their earned sick and safe days, to a minimum of six per year.

Iris Altamirano, president of Service Employees International Union Local 26, said union members “will be on the front lines” of preventing the virus from spreading in Minnesota. “Our workers are being given new tasks to do right now, like wiping down chairs, doorknobs and other surfaces,” Altamirano said.

About 4,000 janitors across the Twin Cities, members of SEIU Local 26, went on a 24-hour strike over unfair labor practices last week.

Should they fall ill from the virus, janitors want their union contract to provide basic protections for themselves and their communities, like paid sick time and affordable health insurance. Altamirano said the union hopes to use its leverage at the bargaining table “to tackle something bigger than just us.”

“We know right now we’re under threat, and we are part of the solution to containing that virus,” Patiño added.

If negotiators fail to make meaningful progress on those demands and others in contract talks scheduled through Friday, the union’s 4,000 members, who staged a 24-hour strike last week, plan to begin an open-ended strike over unfair labor practices Monday.

“We are coming into these negotiations very hopeful we can land a settlement but preparing to do whatever we have to do to get a fair contract,” Altamirano said.

Local 26 members in negotiations are employed by over a dozen different subcontractors to clean corporate office buildings across the Twin Cities. They voted unanimously Feb. 8 to authorize a ULP strike over the companies’ practices of stalling and refusing to give information, and to settle a fair contract.

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Airport workers confront Delta CEO during Minneapolis luncheon

September 25, 2014 by

Three workers interrupted Delta CEO Richard Anderson’s speech before a Chamber of Commerce luncheon Tuesday in Minneapolis. They questioned why Anderson’s salary increased to over $14 million last year, while workers who assist Delta passengers at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport struggle to make ends meet.

“Mr. Anderson, Delta is making record profits, yet wheelchair agents who transport Delta passengers are paid minimum wage,” said Darcy Landau, a military veteran from St. Paul who works as a wheelchair agent at MSP. “We can barely survive. Will airport workers ever share in this growth?”

Video footage, taken by Local 26 of the Service Employees International Union, shows Landau and other workers being escorted out of the banquet room after interrupting Anderson’s speech.

Landau and other workers have been attempting to organize with SEIU Local 26 for the last few years. They do not work directly for Delta, but for subcontractors that handle the airlines’ passenger-service responsibilities at MSP.

Delta reported profits of $2.7 billion in 2013, but those record earnings have yet to trickle down into passenger-service workers’ paychecks. Outside of the luncheon, workers and supporters held a sign reading “Record Profits for Delta, Poverty Wages for Workers.”

Abera Siyoum, an AirServ cart driver at MSP, asked Anderson about a comment made by the CEO in reference to the corporation’s record success in 2013.

“Mr. Anderson, you said in the news that ‘across the board 2013 was an outstanding year,’ yet since I must work 70 hours a week to survive I hardly get to see my children,” said Siyoum, who works two jobs to support his wife and two children. “Do you think my family is as happy about Delta’s profits as you are?”

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Report shows passenger service workers earn poverty-level wages at MSP Airport

October 29, 2013 by

State Rep. Ryan Winkler (right), co-author of a bill to raise Minnesota's minimum wage to $9.50 by 2015, greets Darcy Landau before a press conference outside Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.

State Rep. Ryan Winkler (right), co-author of a bill to raise Minnesota’s minimum wage to $9.50 by 2015, greets Darcy Landau before a press conference outside Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.

As a military veteran with a college education, Darcy Landau is overqualified for his job as a wheelchair agent at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. Earning wages of $7.25 per hour, Landau struggles to make monthly car payments, pay back his student loans and meet his basic needs.

“If it weren’t for the VA,” Landau said, “I don’t know how I’d survive.”

Landau’s is hardly an isolated case. Low-wage jobs have provided the fragile foundation for the current U.S. economic recovery, accounting for more than half of the jobs created since 2010. As more and more adults turn to retail, service, hospitality and temporary jobs, public scrutiny of wages paid in those industries is increasing.

A report unveiled yesterday sheds light on the working conditions of Landau and roughly 600 other passenger-service workers at MSP, including cabin cleaners, wheelchair agents and motorized cart drivers. Its findings reveal that many earn wages at or near the legal minimum, even after many years on the job. Few can afford the health care insurance offered by their employers, and many  say they are forced to access public services like food stamps and Medicaid to meet their basic needs.

Jordan Ash, an organizer for Local 26 of the Service Employees International Union, which compiled the report, said the public is essentially “subsidizing poverty wages at MSP” to the tune of $1.7 million per year.

Local 26 has been working with passenger-service workers on a union-organizing drive for the last two years. But at a press conference outside Terminal 1 yesterday, workers and community leaders pointed to the report’s findings as yet another reason to raise the state’s minimum wage.

[Click here to sign the petition in support of a $9.50 minimum wage in Minnesota.]

“We can’t afford to live with a $7.25 minimum wage, to pay our bills,” said Misrek Anbesse, who has worked as a cabin cleaner for the last four years. “We have to look for a second job.”

“I have seven kids,” said Samson Yeshitla, who earns $7.25 working for G2 Secure Staff, a Texas-based contractor that provides Delta Air Lines with wheelchair agents and electric-cart drivers. “It’s hard to survive.”

Yeshitla is one of more than 300 parents working for poverty-level wages at the airport, according to Local 26’s report. Peggy Flanaganan, executive director of the Children’s Defense Fund-Minnesota, said increasing in the minimum wage would directly improve the lives of airport workers’ children, too.

“We know if we increase minimum wage to $9.50 by 2015, over 137,000 children will directly benefit,” she said, pointing to research by the Brookings Institution indicating a $1,000 increase in families’ incomes corresponds with tangibly improved educational outcomes for their children.

State Rep. Ryan Winkler, lead author of a bill to raise Minnesota’s minimum wage to $9.50 by 2015, also stood with airport workers. His bill, supported by the labor-backed Raise the Wage coalition, would increase wages for 360,000 Minnesotans, and boost purchasing power by $400 million throughout the state’s economy.

“It’s important to remember the economy is leaving behind a great many workers,” Winkler said. “Hard work should deliver somebody a decent quality of life. It’s about time we all start doing better.”

Local 26 already represents about 200 cleaning workers at MSP. Under the terms of their collective bargaining agreement, they earn, on average, $14 per hour with health benefits.

That’s why workers like Landau aren’t just fighting for an increase in the minimum wage; they’re also working to form a union.

“This is only the beginning,” Landau said. “We’ll continue to fight until we get justice.”

Airport workers Samson Yeshitla (left) and Misrek Anbesse join a press conference in support of raising the state's minimum wage outside Terminal 1.

Airport workers Samson Yeshitla (left) and Misrek Anbesse join a press conference in support of raising the state’s minimum wage outside Terminal 1.

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Machinists OK contracts with United Airlines

October 29, 2013 by

International_Association_Of_Machinists_and_Aerospace_Workers_logo1Members of the International Association of Machinists voted yesterday to approve new, nationwide collective bargaining agreements with United Airlines covering employees in the airline’s fleet service, passenger-service and storekeeper workgroups.

The agreements cover more than 28,000 workers at United, Continental and subsidiary airlines, including 158 members of Machinists Local 1833 who work at the Minneapolis–St. Paul International Airport. The contracts go into effect Nov. 1 and, because contracts under the Railway Labor Act do not expire, become amendable Jan. 1, 2017.

Union members voted down tentative agreements with United in April. In negotiations since then, workers agreed to concessions related to vacation benefits in exchange for increased pension contributions and wage improvements.

Members will receive payments for those wage increases retroactive to January 2010, when their previous contract with United became amendable, Local 1833 President A.J. Lindell said. For most Local 1833 members, those retroactive payments will be between $6,000 and $10,000.

“That’s nothing to shake a stick at,” he said. “Overall, I think people were satisfied with the agreements.”

The union also succeeded in beating back United’s plan to outsource more customer-service jobs to non-union, low-wage contractors, which drew protest at MSP earlier this year.

The tentative agreement voted down by members in April would have enabled United to resume outsourcing jobs after the contract becomes amendable in 2017. The contracts approved by Machinists this week push that date back to Jan. 15, 2018 – and include a “poison pill” as incentive for the company not to drag out negotiations, Lindell said.

“If there is no agreement, everybody would get a 3 percent raise on that date,” he said.

Above-wing employees – customer-service, ticket and gate agents – in Local 1833 approved their agreement with 90 percent voting “yes.” Local 1833’s below-wing employees – mostly baggage handlers – approved their agreement with 60 percent voting “yes.”

The contracts received “yes” votes from about 70 percent of voting Machinists nationwide.

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Machinists picket United Airlines for outsourcing middle class jobs

August 27, 2013 by

Machinists Local 1833 members picketing outside Terminal 1 today include (L to R) Derrick Bollea, A.J. Lindell and Greg Durand.

Machinists Local 1833 members picketing outside Terminal 1 today include (L to R) Derrick Bollea, A.J. Lindell and Greg Durand.

United Airlines’ union employees greeted travelers approaching Minneapolis – St. Paul International Airport today, raising public awareness of the airline’s plan to outsource more customer-service jobs to non-union, low-wage contractors – a plan that could impact jobs based in the Twin Cities.

At its peak, the daylong informational picket line outside Terminal 1 drew 25 members of International Association of Machinists Local 1833. Holding “Outsourcing Is Wrong” signs, they attracted horn honks and waves of support from passing drivers.

United laid off about 240 Machinists union members earlier this year, shifting their work to low-cost vendors – like subcontractors – at six U.S. airports where the airline has a minimal presence.

Another round of outsourcing is in the works, union members say, and it is likely to hit airports where United employs between 50 and 150 workers. The Machinists represent about 200 MSP-based United workers.

“We’re within that realm,” Local 1833 President A.J. Lindell said of the next round of layoffs. “If it happens, all these good-paying, middle-class jobs are gone. United replaces them with minimum-wage work and minimal customer service.”

Similar actions have taken place at airports across the country this summer – including one today at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago, a hub of operations for United.

The MSP action, Lindell said, was the first staged at one of United’s “line stations,” or non-hub operations.

“We think good corporate profits come from good middle-class jobs,” Lindell said. “United made $469 million in the second quarter alone last year. “Their financial justification for outsourcing 200 jobs is that it will save them $1 million annually. It seems a bit unnecessary, to say the least.”

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