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Washington, D.C.—The leader of the union representing thousands of border protection employees today strongly applauded introduction of legislation—H.R. 1—that would grant to employees of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) the same collective bargaining rights as other workers in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

H.R. 1 is a broad package of legislation implementing many recommendations of the 9/11 Commission and includes language that requires TSA employees have the same employment rights, including collective bargaining, as other federal employees. The legislation terminates the current personnel system and gives the DHS Secretary the option of moving TSA employees to one of the personnel management systems currently in place for other federal employees.

President Colleen M. Kelley of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) had called on the newly-convened House of Representatives to include the TSA collective bargaining language in early legislation, and she commended Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee for his leadership in obtaining that result.

“This provision will allow TSA employees the same rights other DHS employees enjoy,” President Kelley wrote to Rep. Thompson adding that NTEU will work closely with the Senate to ensure that this inequity will be also addressed in that chamber expeditiously and TSA employees will finally have the same voice that Customs and Border Protection personnel and other DHS employees have in their workplace.

CBP employees have full collective bargaining rights in the first place thanks to NTEU’s successful efforts in federal court in defeating regulations advanced by DHS and the Office of Personnel Management that would have severely restricted not only collective bargaining rights, but their due process and appeal rights as well.

In legislation establishing TSA, the DHS secretary was given the latitude to decide whether or not to allow its employees to have collective bargaining rights; the authority was delegated to the first head of TSA, who refused to permit agency employees to have such rights.

President Kelley said NTEU will push hard for approval of H.R. 1 as a mean of extending to TSA employees “basic fairness and the right to a meaningful voice in their work lives that have thus far been denied them.”

As the largest independent federal union, NTEU represents some 150,000 employees in 30 agencies and departments, including nearly 15,000 in CBP.