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Washington, D.C.—The grant of collective bargaining rights will be a major factor in ongoing efforts to build a well-trained, professional workforce with high employee morale that can best help secure the nation’s air travel system, the leader of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) wrote to the head of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA).

In a letter to TSA Administrator John S. Pistole, NTEU President Colleen M. Kelley said the action last Friday of the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA) in ordering a union representation election “underscores the critical need for collective bargaining rights in TSA.”

She added: “I urge you to use your authority under the Aviation and Transportation Security Act to issue an immediate directive granting these vital rights to the employees of your agency.”

NTEU is leading the effort to secure collective bargaining rights in TSA. The FLRA ordered an election despite the lack of such rights among the agency’s employees.

“Collective bargaining rights breathe life into the idea of employees having a meaningful voice in their workplace and their work lives,” Kelley wrote to Pistole, adding that, for TSA employees, “these rights have long been delayed.”

TSA is a unit of the Department of Homeland Security, where a great many employees already have the right to bargain collectively and all that goes with that, the NTEU leader emphasized. This includes the 24,000 employees of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, for whom NTEU is the exclusive representative.

President Kelley noted, as well, that private sector employees providing security screening at a number of airports around the country have collective bargaining rights. “TSA employees deserve no less,” she said. NTEU has an ongoing organizing effort among TSA Officers at airports nationwide, and represents many thousands of these men and women.

NTEU is the nation’s largest independent federal union, representing 150,000 employees in 31 agencies and departments.