April 28, 2011 |
Nation questioning the media-driven anti-TSA campaign, which we argued smelled of AstroTurf. For one thing, it made little sense that an issue like TSA pat-downs, offensive as they were, could dominate headlines for two straight weeks at a time when America was suffering from unprecedented corruption, lawless evictions of homeowners, unheard-of inequality, and wars that barely make news.
Sure enough, we uncovered numerous Koch-linked libertarian activists spearheading the campaign to demonize TSA screeners, DC lobbyists specializing in fake-grassroots campaigns setting up “Opt Out” websites while posing as regular Joes, and sleazy Republican hacks who had shown little interest in protecting civil liberties suddenly getting their ACLU on over the TSA’s intrusive pat-downs and “porn scans.” Progressives were understandably drawn into the anti-TSA campaign and hysteria, as the PR campaign cleverly framed it not as a union-bashing operation, but rather, as a purely civil liberties issue.
The anti-TSA campaign was at its media-hysteria peak in the weeks after the Republican election sweep, spurred on by last year’s hero, John Tyner, who refused a pat-down, telling TSA agents, “You touch my junk and I'm going to have you arrested.” Tyner disappeared from the scene after he apologized on his blog, and admitted that he didn't tell the whole story and had actively tried to erase it(Tyner did not return our call or answer our message requesting comment).* But the slack was quickly picked up by waves of anti-TSA campaigns ever since, drawing together an alliance of rabid Christian homophobes and neo-Confederates, warmongering neocons and notorious anti-union lobbying outfits, and even a few blasts-from-the-right-wing-
To understand why such a diverse range of right-wing Republicans -- many of whom had previously shown little interest in civil liberties, if not outright hostility to them -- would suddenly unite last November to rage against the porn-scanner machine, a brief history on the TSA, unions, and their struggle for collective bargaining rights is in order:
Until 9/11, the task of managing America’s airport screeners was left to the private sector, which squeezed profits by hiring low-qualified, poorly-trained screeners willing to work for at or near minimum wages, making pre-TSA airport screeners among the lowest-paid security workers in the nation, according to one investigation.
After 9/11, the frightened and traumatized public demanded better security in the form of higher-quality, better-paid federal screeners. The private sector, as in so many instances, could not be trusted to put the public’s interests over the CEOs’ profit interests. But President Bush and the Republicans resisted the public’s demands: They worried less about security, and more about creating a brand new federal agency for airport screeners, whose employees would likely unionize. At a time when most Americans were still too traumatized to pay attention to such seemingly arcane bureaucratic issues, the Bush White House had Iraq invasions and union-busting hot on its mind.
Their logic then was the same as it is today: If TSA employees are allowed to unionize with collective bargaining rights, it would represent perhaps the single largest pro-unionization drive in decades, adding tens of thousands of dues-paying members to the public sector union rolls, reversing decades of decline and, most importantly, funnel money to pro-labor and predominately Democratic candidates. Former House Majority Leader and current FreedomWorks head Dick Armey, who voted against federalizing airport screeners, explained in 2001, ''It's all about union membership in a union that imposes compulsory dues that fund their campaigns.” Of course, this is just another classic right-wing anti-union lie: dues aren’t compulsory as they like to allege. But Armey’s fixation on those union dues was real -- the Republicans would rather staff airport security with rent-a-cops and burger-flippers than risk enabling unions to collect dues and spend them on political campaigns.
Robert Poole, who left the Koch-founded Reason Foundation to serve as President Bush’s top advisor on airport security, laid out the White House’s opposition to federal screeners just a few weeks after the terrorist attacks:
“A federal workforce would resist the use of labor-saving technology, object to being reassigned freely, and almost certainly become unionized.” [italics ours]
Unfortunately for Republicans, the public wasn’t convinced: A Time magazine poll showed that 77% of Americans wanted federal workers in control of airport security. So the Republicans gave in and passed a law federalizing airport and baggage screeners, but with one unusual caveat: no collective bargaining rights for TSA employees, unless their boss, the appointed head of the TSA, gave the green light. Not surprisingly, Bush’s TSA chiefs were as opposed to TSA workers unionizing as Bush himself.
In early 2003, just as TSA workers were going through the first stages of organizing by the American Federation of Government Employees, the TSA’s boss, James Loy, signed an order “precluding collective bargaining.” Only now, instead of opposing unionized TSA workers on the grounds that they might become a base of Democratic Party support (which was too obviously cynical even for Republicans), Loy parroted the new official line, first put out by Reason’s Robert Poole, claiming that unionized screeners would threaten national security:
"Mandatory collective bargaining is not compatible with the flexibility required to wage the war against terrorism.
…Fighting terrorism demands a flexible workforce that can rapidly respond to threats. That can mean changes in work assignments and other conditions of employment that are not compatible with the duty to bargain with labor unions.”
Attempts to organize the TSA’s nearly 45,000 security screeners -- who make up the majority of the agency's approximately 55,000 employees -- roughly went nowhere all throughout President Bush’s two terms. Even after the Democrats’ 2006 Congressional sweep, they failed to overcome opposition led by Sen. Jim DeMint, who urged President Bush to veto any Homeland Security bill that included collective bargaining rights for TSA employees, even if a veto meant defunding the Homeland Security Department and shutting it down. DeMint made no bones about which threat bothered him most; unions or terrorists:
"Unionizing the 43,000 security screeners at TSA could give labor unions a $17 million annual windfall in the form of new union dues," he said. "This is a hearty payback to the unions for helping Democrats win the past election. These dues can then be kicked back to lawmakers in the form of political contributions without the consent of rank-and-file union members."
With the GOP blocking all attempts at unionizaton, TSA employees had little recourse and almost no leverage against abuse at the hands of all-powerful TSA managers, whose abuse was clearly encouraged by an atmosphere in which it was clear that TSA employees would not have the same rights and protections as other federal employees. As numerous complaints of sexual harassment, illegal firings, and rampant bullying by TSA management piled up, the agency consistently ranked as suffering from the lowest morale among over 200 federal agencies and the highest turnover, with attrition rates over 10 times higher than other agencies. A shocking 30 percent of the workforce reported suffering from illnesses and injuries, a rate six times higher than other federal agency employees.
In Denver International Airport, over 20 former TSA screeners reported widespread sexual harassment and bullying. TSA worker Ingrid Cartinelle, targeted for harassment by management, found a dead rat in her employee locker, causing her to faint and vomit due to her phobia of rodents. Later, someone smashed her car windshield and spiked her tires, and shortly after that, she was attacked outside her workplace, pepper-sprayed, and dragged up a stairwell by the neck before fellow employees ran to her aid. Local police, and later Homeland Security investigated, but came up empty handed -- she filed suit against the TSA. “They were just allowed and permitted to do whatever they wanted to. To bully you, harass you, everything you could think of, they did," Cartinelle told journalists.
In 2004, four top TSA managers at Seattle-Tacoma International were fired following an investigation into complaints of mismanagement and harsh working conditions. That same year, in Spokane International Airport, three top TSA managers were removed following a petition that TSA employees sent to Sen. Patty Murray, complaining that TSA "leaders intimidated workers and engaged in personal and unprofessional relationships with others." At Pittsburgh International Airport in 2005, the top three TSA officials were forced to resign after being investigated for sexual harassment, fraud, and intimidation. One screener told PBS Newshour in 2003, “When you have a supervisor go in front of 200 employees and tell them he's looking for blonde-hair leads and supervisors, I have problems. I don't have blonde hair. I have graduated from college. There are no promotions for people of color.”
In Bush’s final year in office, the TSA inspector general issued an alarming report saying that employee morale was so rock-bottom that it was negatively impacting airport security.
A week before the 2008 presidential elections, Barack Obama sent a letter to AFGE union leaders pledging to support their drive to unionize the TSA if elected president. But as with so many issues, President Obama’s support turned out to be far more tepid than candidate Obama’s, while in the Republican camp, opposition hardened under the leadership of two Tea Party heroes, Jim DeMint and Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah.
Rep. Chaffetz's first piece of legislation, which he introduced in April 2009, was a bill to limit the use of TSA body-imaging scanners on the grounds that it they were an “invasion of privacy.” Chaffetz’s bill attracted the support of the ACLU and Democrats from across the aisle. As soon as he was done crusading against the TSA’s civil liberties violations, Chaffetz hopped on a plane to Guantanamo Bay on a fact-finding mission, and reported that civil liberties were thriving like never before in the extra-legal internment camp: “Guantanamo Bay has been inaccurately portrayed as a site of ongoing detainee torture and mistreatment – nothing could be further from the truth,” Chaffetz wrote in an open letter to President Obama. “[C]ontrary to popular belief, waterboarding never happened at Guantanamo Bay.” As proof, Chaffetz’s letter cheerfully noted that Guantanamo inmates “have access to hundreds of movies such as Oceans 13, Liar Liar, and Finding Nemo.” Inmates were so pampered that even their hunger strikes tasted delicious: “We go to great lengths to see that their nutritional needs are met, even offering a variety of flavored liquid nutrients to detainees participating in hunger strikes.”
In September 2009, shortly after Chaffetz voted to prohibit TSA employees from unionizing, he made headlines in a bizarre airport incident in which he claimed he had been targeted for retaliatory harassment by Salt Lake City Airport screeners. But Chaffetz’s story started to fall apart after local news reported that Chaffetz himself acted aggressively and “escalated the situation” by cursing a TSA screener, throwing his card at one, and grabbing a TSA employee’s badge. But that did not stop Chaffetz: Last November, in the peak of the anti-TSA hysteria, the Congressman seized on a completely false story pushed by ultra-rightwing Hollywood clown Andrew Breitbart and the Drudge Report alleging that the TSA had forcibly strip-searched a young boy. Despite the fact that the boy’s father confirmed that it was not true, Chaffetz wouldn’t let it die, going as far as calling for a Congressional investigation.
Meanwhile in the Senate, Tea Party “king” Jim DeMint single-handedly staved off the threat of unionization by filibustering Obama’s nominees to head the TSA, ensuring that the agency created to prevent another 9/11 remained headless for nearly 1-1/2 years. Obama’s first nominee, Errol Southers, was held up by DeMint throughout all of 2009 because Southers refused to come out against collective bargaining.
It was only when the “underwear bomber” tried blowing up a passenger jet over Detroit that the TSA, and its lack of a leader, suddenly became an issue. But in astrange twist of logic, DeMint used the occasion to prove his point, telling reporters that the underwear bomber was “a perfect example of why the Obama administration should not unionize the TSA.” Rather than apologizing for keeping the TSA leaderless that year, he scolded Obama to “put the interests of American travelers ahead of organized labor.”
Like Reason’s Robert Poole, FreedomWorks’ Dick Armey, and numerous other right-wing Republicans and libertarians, DeMint played the “national security threat” card to justify his opposition to collective bargaining rights for TSA screeners, claiming it would "significantly undermine TSA's ability to respond to threats and protect the nation."
It’s a false line of reasoning: Other law enforcement agencies within the Department of Homeland Security, including Customs and Border Protection guards, are unionized, as are police department employees across the nation. The real threat to security, of course, comes from the savage workplace conditions that TSA screeners endure. Rep. Ed Perlmutter (D-CO), who brought this issue before Congress in 2009, said, "If you have someone stabbing you in the back, if you have sex harassment charges against you, your mind is not going to be on the job. And this is a job where you have to be alert. All the time."
The only people who saw unions as a threat to their existence were, of course, the Republicans. As if to illustrate this, one of Tom Ridge’s earliest acts in officeat the newly-created Homeland Security Department in 2002 was to denounce a Longshore workers’ strike in Oakland as a threat to national security, and demand they call off the strike immediately.
The only people who saw unions as a threat to their existence were, of course, the Republicans. As if to illustrate this, one of Tom Ridge’s earliest acts in officeat the newly-created Homeland Security Department in 2002 was to denounce a Longshore workers’ strike in Oakland as a threat to national security, and demand they call off the strike immediately.
But DeMint, to whom David Koch personally awarded a “George Washington Prize” for leading the fight to kill Obama's health insurance reform plan, laid out the stakes in his 2009 book Saving Freedom: “Labor unions are one of the most powerful forces in Washington, and they support Democrats almost exclusively,” he wrote. Cheerfully noting that private sector unions have long since declined to the point of near-irrelevancy, DeMint ominously observes, “more than 35 percent of government workers are members of a union.” That means union dues for Democratic candidates, and in return, “The Democratic Party reciprocates by shamelessly promoting the union agenda in Congress.”
Just as Bush and the rest of the GOP prioritized politics over security concerns in 2001, DeMint chose to hold up and eventually defeat Obama’s first two nominees, both African-Americans, to head the TSA. It wasn’t until Obama nominated someone with solid conservative credentials -- the FBI’s number two, John Pistole -- that DeMint finally relented. Pistole was a crapshoot. Neither labor nor the anti-labor right was pleased, yet neither side knew exactly where he would come down on unionization.
And then last November, everything suddenly came to a head. First, the Republicans swept Congressional elections, and they wasted little time in setting the new agenda. Then, on November 12, after years of setbacks and disappointments, the Federal Labor Relations Board issued a surprise ruling (even to labor organizers) finally giving TSA employees the green light to unionize.
But Labor barely had time to celebrate: the very next day, November 13, Matt Drudge posted and promoted the famous “Don’t Touch My Junk” video, which quickly turned into the media sensation of the season, hogging headlines for nearly two straight weeks. Almost no one found it strange that the cause of civil liberties was suddenly taken up, in almost perfect unison, by the whole range of right-wing waterboarding-cheerleaders like Glenn Beck, George Will and his colleague Charles Krauthammer, who declared:
“Don’t touch my junk is the anthem of the modern man, the Tea Party patriot, the late-life libertarian, the midterm election voter...This time you have gone too far, Big Bro'. The sleeping giant awakes. Take my shoes, remove my belt, waste my time and try my patience. But don't touch my junk.”
Indeed.
In hindsight, now that we understand the Republican playbook and their political goals, what happened last November makes a lot more sense. It all starts with a political goal: prevent the TSA screeners from unionizing. The strategy: 1) concoct and magnify fake government oppression at the hands of the TSA; 2) Demonize and blame the crisis on your political target, TSA screeners, so that the public turns against them; 3) Push and PR the message, focusing on valid but largely trivial aspects of the problem; and 4) Now you can appear, not as cruel union-buster, but as a hero defending the public.
The reason why last November’s anti-TSA AstroTurf campaign was so successful was because it was based on valid criticisms of TSA policies and tapped into real anger, while deviously redirecting that anger against an innocent target. The con succeeded in duping many progressives, who allowed themselves to be caught up in the euphoria of what seemed like a genuine mass-conversion among right-wingers to the cause of civil libertarianism. But over on the Republican side, there was never a doubt about what the anti-TSA campaign was about -- even if they couldn't get their numbers straight -- as this blog post in Erik Erickson’s website RedState, headlined “TSA Unionization: A $30 Million Annual Gift to Union Bosses” shows:
In a significant victory for federal employee unions, the Federal Labor Relations Authority decided Friday that Transportation Security Administration staffers will be allowed to vote on union representation. The decision clears the way for a campaign by the government’s two largest labor organizations, the American Federation of Government Employees and the National Treasury Employees Union, to represent some 50,000 transportation security officers.
Here’s some informal statistics for you:
Number of TSA employees eligible for unionization: 50,000
· TSA budget for FY 2010: $7.8 billion
· Estimated Union Dues TSA unionization will provide union bosses at $50 per month:$2,500,000 per month or $30,000,000 per year.
· Number of Americans whose Fourth Amendment rights have allegedly been violated:Thousands and still counting.
· NUMBER OF TERRORISTS CAUGHT BY THE TSA: 0
Unfortunately for the union-busters and their hired DC operatives working the media, the “grassroots” outrage against the TSA’s screeners, which was supposed to take shape in a much-hyped Thanksgiving Holiday “Opt-Out” campaign of mass civil disobedience in airports across the nation—a kind of libertarian “Days of Rage”—never materialized as promised, leaving countless journalists looking foolish and puzzled. The media regurgitated a well-oiled PR message promising mass spontaneous people’s action against the “police state.” Instead, not a single airport experienced anything remotely newsworthy or unusual; it was as though the entire campaign was a hoax. A hoax that the media showed absolutely no curiosity in recognizing or solving: For two weeks, every major television and media outlet talked up this alleged grassroots anti-government rage sweeping the country, a tidal wave of liberty about to crash into America’s security checkpoints. But nothing happened; and no one asked themost obvious question: “Was the outrage even real, or did the media get played?”
Now we know: the media, and the country, got played.
Fortunately for TSA employees, this story ends on a marginally less depressing note. John Pistole, Obama’s TSA chief, finally granted the TSA workforce the right to unionize. However, Pistole’s order, like so many Obama Administration policies, barely qualifies as an improvement: the TSA’s union will only be allowed to negotiate peripheral issues such as shift bids, awards, transfers, and uniform allowances. Unlike other federal employees, the TSA union will still be prohibited from negotiating more important matters like disciplinary standards and job qualifications. As has been the pattern for decades, the Democrats are granting labor the bare minimum promised.
Employees voted overwhelmingly to unionize this April -- 84% said “yes,” despite the restrictions. There will be a second round of voting beginning in May and closing June 23 to decide between the two unions vying to represent TSA employees -- the AFGE and the smaller National Treasury Employees’ Union.
*“To those of you who feel duped, I apologize”—so writes John Tyner in a contrite blog post headlined “The ‘Whole’ Truth” dated November 30, 2010. A week earlier, he was the biggest media sensation in America, freeing us from state tyranny; by the time he apologized to America, America had already lost interest and moved on.
No comments:
Post a Comment