The Trump administration’s decision to terminate the Transportation Security Administration’s collective bargaining agreement had already put flight attendants, lawmakers and at least one airline — Delta Air Lines — on high alert.
Delta said it was “monitoring the situation closely.” The Association of Flight Attendants said in a statement the termination is “terrible for aviation security and everyone who depends on safe travel.” And TSA workers across the country are speaking out against the termination.
Then on Thursday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order aimed at exempting more agencies from federal collective bargaining requirements.
Lawmakers in Congress have been closely watching what the move against the TSA’s agreement could mean for public safety.
“There’s a clear correlation between workforce and safety,” Rep. Ritchie Torres, a Democrat, told NOTUS. “You need sufficient staffing in order to ensure safety at airports and in order to prevent a repeat of a terrorist attack like 9/11. When you have an organization like DOGE barging into an agency like Department of Homeland Security or TSA and simply firing people abruptly and arbitrarily, it has dangerous implications for national security and airport safety.”
TSA employees are not subject to the same labor protections that cover other federal employees because of a quirk in the way the agency was created. TSA employees’ efforts to get recategorized by Congress in order to get the same organizing rights have been unsuccessful. That’s left them vulnerable to what some Democrats have described as political maneuvers by the Trump administration, like terminating the agency’s collective bargaining agreement earlier this month.
Trump’s moves to restrict collective bargaining in agencies is the latest in a string of actions that’s left transportation observers wondering if the administration’s decisions are affecting airport safety. Senators from both parties have questioned if the Federal Aviation Administration’s layoffs of probationary workers could affect air travel in the long term. And in an effort to increase the number of air traffic controllers on duty, some senators indicated they’d support Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy’s proposal to allow controllers to serve past the retirement age of 56, even as the national union that represents air traffic controllers has taken the position that it could be a hazard.
The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees TSA, announced the termination of the agreement and has argued that getting rid of the collective bargaining agreement would remove “bureaucratic hurdles that will strengthen workforce agility [and] enhance productivity and resiliency, while also jumpstarting innovation.” The Department of Homeland Security didn’t respond to a request for comment on concerns that the termination of the agreement could hinder safety.
TSA is already facing a shortage of workers, and proponents of the collective bargaining agreement say that the agreement played a key role in making the job more attractive, resulting in employees wanting to stay with the agency longer.
“I like the idea that people work here 10 to 15 years, versus two or three that are just kind of maybe unfamiliar with the agency or the policies,” Amelia Glymph, deputy director of the American Federation of Government Employees, who served as the chief negotiator of the contract, told NOTUS. “When you have someone with a lot of experience, I think the whole traveling experience for the public is just better for everyone. It’s safer.”
AFGE believes the termination of the TSA’s collective bargaining agreement is a “retaliatory action” for past legal action the union has taken against Trump.
Earlier this month, Rep. Bennie Thompson and Sen. Brian Schatz reintroduced a bill to codify the rights and protections that TSA workers had under their collective bargaining agreement. Thompson told NOTUS that the “potential is there” for safety to be hindered by the abrupt termination of the agreement.
“You got happy workers, glad to come to work, and all of a sudden it looks as if you’re trying to walk back previously agreed upon situations,” Thompson said. “With this many people flying every day, why would you compromise anything about passenger safety and security by just being hostile toward workers who, up to this point, have done a magnificent job on a daily basis?”
Republican Rep. Jeff Van Drew, who co-sponsored Thompson’s bill in the last Congress, told NOTUS he disagrees with the argument many of his Republican colleagues hold that giving TSA workers the right to unionize could compromise safety. That said, he doesn’t think terminating the collective bargaining agreement will impact safe air travel, either.
“I understand the viewpoint of the administration,” Van Drew said. “I just am one that generally believes in the right to collective bargain. And so for that reason, I hope that, in time, maybe that we look at that again and review that. I don’t think it’ll necessarily cause a safety issue, though. I think that’s taking it a step further.”
AFGE began negotiating TSA’s collective bargaining agreement in 2023, and a final agreement was enacted last year that more closely aligned their benefits with those that other federal workers were guaranteed at that time. That included additional shift trade options for TSA employees who need to take unscheduled leave and parental bereavement. The agreement also gave workers greater negotiation power. With the agreement’s termination, TSA workers lost the right of union representation at disciplinary meetings, and there is concern that the pay increase they negotiated in 2023 could also be at risk.
TSA workers say that the stress and uncertainty surrounding their agency given the termination of the agreement doesn’t help job performance.
“It’s a stressful enough job,” Joe Shuker, a current transportation security officer and AFGE TSA 100 Council vice president in a region that includes Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. “We’re looking for bombs every day. And to have an officer on there worrying now that they don’t have anybody to represent them. They get disciplined, or some supervisor that don’t like them could write them up or fire them even. That would have to worry you.”
Republicans in Congress have largely lined up by the administration’s decision to terminate the employees’ bargaining agreement.
Rep. Clay Higgins, who serves on the House Committee on Homeland Security, told NOTUS that he hasn’t “seen any evidence that would indicate that union work or union presence enhances security.” He added that staffing issues the agency already has would not be worsened.
“Everybody has staffing issues,” Higgins said. “Collective bargaining as it existed, we believe, was a detriment to the overall, like, employer-employee relationship and the focus on the mission, which should be the safety of our travelers. So we want to make TSA and all of DHS more efficient and more mission focused.”
Sen. Ron Johnson told NOTUS he doesn’t “think government employees ought to be unionized” and that he “would support the administration’s efforts.”
Not all Democrats were ready to jump to the conclusion that terminating the agreement could cause safety issues at airports. Rep. Kweisi Mfume said he’s taking a wait-and-see approach.
“I don’t know yet,” Mfume told NOTUS. “I’ve got to do an assessment with TSA. Whatever they tell me, I think, is more accurate than I know right now.”
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Torrence Banks is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.