From The Associated Press
Excerpts from recent editorials in newspapers in the United States:
On collective-bargaining rights for federal baggage screeners:
It was wrong for baggage screeners at our nation's airports to be made federal employees, and there is no reason for those screeners now to gain collective-bargaining rights.
Better security was the excuse for making screeners federal workers -- at great taxpayer expense -- after the 9/11 attacks. But it was never clear how taking virtually the same pool of workers and putting them on the U.S. payroll would improve their skills.
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Sadly, multiple tests show the federalization of the workers did not boost security. Privately employed screeners outperformed federal screeners in 2005. And in tests in 2007, banned materials were three to four times more likely to get through federal screeners in Los Angeles and Chicago than through privately employed screeners in San Francisco. ...
But now, with our security protocols already apparently ineffective, the Obama administration is likely to extend collective-bargaining rights to 40,000 federal baggage screeners. That's a bad idea, because the Transportation Security Administration needs flexibility to hire and fire workers rapidly in response to employee qualifications and terrorist threats. Drawn-out labor disputes and hearings will make that flexibility impossible. ...
But the administration wants to keep union campaign donors happy, and union leaders expect that once the president names a new Transportation Security Administration head, that person will give screeners collective-bargaining rights.
That unfortunately puts Big Labor politics ahead of national security.
-- Chattanooga (Tenn.) Free Press
