The Department of Homeland Security said Friday it is ending the collective bargaining agreement with the union representing thousands of frontline workers with the Transportation Security Administration, a decision the TSA union called an “unprovoked attack.”
In announcing the decision, DHS criticized the union — which represents worker responsible for screening airline passengers — claiming TSA employs more people working full-time on union issues than those “performing screening functions at 86% of our airports.”
“This action will ensure Americans will have more effective and modernized workforces across the nation’s transportation networks,” Homeland Security said in a statement. “TSA is renewing its commitment to providing a quick and secure travel process for Americans.”
The decision to end collective bargaining was criticized by the Association of Flight Attendants, a union representing flight attendants, and Democratic lawmakers, with both claiming that the action will make flying less safe. DHS’s decision comes after the agency last year pushed to boost TSA workers’ pay, which has historically lagged that of other government employees.
In May 2024, the TSA administrator at the time, David Pekoske, signed the collective bargaining agreement and credited pay increases that went into effect in 2023 for helping to improve employee retention and morale, areas where TSA has had challenges.
“Attempting to negate [TSA workers’] legally binding collective bargaining agreement now makes zero sense – it will only reduce morale and hamper the workforce,” said Rep. Bennie G. Thompson, a Democrat from Mississippi and ranking member of the Committee on Homeland Security, in a statement on Friday.
In the announcement, DHS said poor performers were being allowed to stay on the job and that the agreement was hindering the ability of the organization “to safeguard our transportation systems and keep Americans safe” — an assessment that faced immediate pushback from Thompson and the union.
The decision is “terrible for aviation security and everyone who depends on safe travel,” the Association of Flight Attendants said. The group added, “This will take us back to the days of security at the lowest price with the highest costs for our country.”
Impact on 47,000 TSA workers
The American Federation of Government Employees, the union representing the TSA workers, said in a statement that the order would strip collective bargaining rights from roughly 47,000 transportation security officers, or TSOs. Those are people responsible for staffing airports around the country and checking to make sure that hundreds of thousands of passengers a day do not carry any weapons or explosives into the secure areas of airports.
The union said Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and President Donald Trump’s administration were violating the right of staffers to join a union. It also said that the reasons the Republican administration had given for the decision — specifically the criticisms of union activity — were “completely fabricated.”
Instead, the union said, the decision was retaliation for its wider efforts challenging a range of decisions taken by the Trump administration that have affected federal workers.
AFGE represents roughly 800,000 federal government workers in Washington, D.C., and across the country, and it has been pushing back on many of the administration’s actions such as firing probationary employees and cuts to the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID.
“Our union has been out in front challenging this administration’s unlawful actions targeting federal workers, both in the legal courts and in the court of public opinion,” the union said. “Now our TSA officers are paying the price with this clearly retaliatory action.”
The decision to end the collective bargaining agreement comes after Trump’s administration pushed out Pekoske the day Trump was sworn into office. The TSA does not currently have an administrator or a deputy administrator.
In a note to staff, acting TSA Administrator Adam Stahl said Noem made the decision to rescind officers’ collective bargaining rights to align with the Trump administration’s “vision of maximizing government productivity and efficiency and ensuring that our workforce can respond swiftly and effectively to evolving threats.”
“By removing the constraints of collective bargaining, TSOs will be able to operate with greater flexibility and responsiveness, ensuring the highest level of security and efficiency in protecting the American public,” Stahl wrote. “This determination is made with the TSO in mind, ensuring employee inclusivity and restoring meritocracy to the workforce.”
Stahl said the agency “will establish alternative procedures” to address employee concerns and grievances “in a fair and transparent manner.”
“Anti-union talking points”
Rep. Thompson criticized the Homeland Security press release, saying the department was using “flat out wrong anti-union talking points.” He said the real aim was “diminishing” the workforce so “they can transform it in the mold of Project 2025.”
“Attempting to negate their legally binding collective bargaining agreement now makes zero sense — it will only reduce morale and hamper the workforce,” Thompson said. “Since the Biden Administration provided pay increases and a new collective bargaining contract to the workforce, TSA’s attrition rates have plummeted.”
Project 2025 was the conservative governing blueprint that Trump insisted during the 2024 campaign was not part of his agenda. Project 2025 calls for immediately ending the TSA union and eventually privatizing the entire agency.
The TSA was created after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when hijackers smuggled knives and box cutters through security to use as weapons as they commandeered four airplanes and slammed them into the Pentagon, the World Trade Center towers and a Pennsylvania field. The TSA’s mandate when it was created in November 2001 was to prevent a similar attack in the future.
Air travel since then has undergone a massive overhaul, with passengers and their luggage going through extensive screening at the airport and passenger information generally uploaded to TSA in advance of travel to facilitate screening. Increasingly, the agency has also been using facial recognition technology to scan passengers at checkpoints, leading to criticism by some members of Congress.
