For Brenda Negri, becoming an airport screener in the months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks was the culmination of her deeply felt need to serve her country.

“It meant so much for me to work for the government,” says Negri, an airport screener at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). “I cried when I got sworn in.” Because many of her family members served in the military, working for a federal law enforcement agency “epitomized the ultimate in terms of professionalism and integrity.”

	Grounded: Brenda Negri became an airport screener to serve her country—but says without bargaining rights, screeners are subject to employer abuse, working multiple shifts in a row and even 50 days without a day off.

But almost as soon as she was hired by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), Negri says her experiences filled her with doubts. The new federal agency, which Congress created in the aftermath of Sept. 11 to consolidate airport screening functions from a hodgepodge of private contractors, has extensive payroll problems—workers often aren't paid for weeks. Scheduling and overtime assignments are so erratic airport screeners are at their posts long past their ability to stay alert. Workers experience safety and health hazards on the job. As a result, workers not getting paid are facing foreclosures or other dire financial situations—concerns they inevitably carry with them to the job. Many others are overworked and unable to give the attention needed at work. Some suffer on-the-job injuries that also impede their ability to function at a high level.

Faced with these problems, many of the 56,000 federal screeners across the country mobilized to form a union so they could have a voice at work to improve their working conditions—and ultimately passenger safety. AFGE, which represents an array of federal government employees, launched organizing campaigns at Baltimore-Washington International Airport (BWI), Midway Airport in Chicago and at airports in Pittsburgh and elsewhere.

“I hope collectively we'll be one unified voice, so when demands are made that TSA would be more inclined to stop ignoring our requests,” says Negri. “We could push things through we couldn’t do individually.”

But on Jan. 9, Bush administration officials—in the latest of a series of attacks on employee bargaining rights—put an end to the workers’ organizing efforts. Adm. James Loy, undersecretary of transportation for security, signed an order saying screeners could not form a union because “mandatory collective bargaining is not compatible with the flexibility required to wage the war against terrorism.”

Negri says Loy's order is demeaning to her and the tens of thousand of screeners who handle their jobs as responsible professionals. Loy's assertion that union workers interfere with national security “doesn't hold water,” she says, noting that thousands of workers engaged in homeland security—police officers, firefighters, customs agents—are union members. “If you want good national security, screeners should be refreshed and not worrying about things like having their homes foreclosed,” she says.

“I'm answering the call to civic service and doing something to combat terrorism,” says Negri. But without a voice on the job, airport screeners are powerless to improve TSA or public safety. “Now we're propping up a house of cards,” she says. “That's been the hardest thing for me.”

		From America@work, April 2003.

50-day work schedules and no paycheck for months: Screeners at airports across the nation paint a chilling picture of the problems at TSA affecting them and the flying public—and express frustration at having no recourse to improve conditions. Fearing retaliation, many of the dozen screeners interviewed for this story do not want to be identified. But from Seattle to Orlando, their grave workplace concerns are consistent.

Long hours, erratic schedules: Nearly every screener interviewed from a range of airports spoke of 12-hour days unrelieved even by the chance to take a lunch break and work schedules that literally go for weeks. Negri, the LAX screener, says one colleague was scheduled to work three shifts in a row, while another worked 50 days without a day off. Negri worked seven days in a row, 12 hours a day, when she first became a screener. “I walked up on one screener who was dozing off,” says Negri. Last summer, Cynthia Cavalie, a screener at New York City's John F. Kennedy (JFK) International Airport, worked 25 days in a row. “No matter how good a worker you are, 25 consecutive days at a high-stress job will take its toll on your effectiveness,” she says. “When I took my concerns to a supervisor, he said, 'We don't have to listen to you. '”

One reason for the lengthy work days and weeks is erratic and seemingly haphazard scheduling. A screener from Seattle-Tacoma Airport who recently quit says he was given only 12 hours notice for a shift change to a 4 a.m. start time the following day—even though managers knew he went to school part time and couldn't accommodate that schedule. Because there is no union, he notes, there's no procedure for screeners to bid on shifts or to protest when scheduling practices threaten to endanger the flying public. “There are people who go straight from one shift to the next,” he says. “During rush periods, screeners have been required to go without breaks for their entire shifts,” says Orlando International Airport screener Les Marzke. “How good would your concentration be if you hadn't eaten in six or seven hours?”

	“It is patriotic to speak out about being treated fairly. We can serve our nation and not give up democracy.” —Bob Marchetta, Screener, LaGuardia Airport

Dangerous working conditions: Standing on hard floors and staring at X-ray machine monitors without regular breaks or adjustments to minimize eye and muscle strain are taking a toll on screeners, workers say. “The safety of employees affects the safety of the public,” says Bob Marchetta, a screener at LaGuardia Airport in New York City. “Your efficiency suffers.” Marchetta and others note that workers don't have access to meters to measure their exposure to radiation from the X-ray machines—ultimately, the long-term effects of exposure to radiation is an increased risk of developing cancer.

On Dec. 31, TSA began screening all checked baggage for explosives. To meet the massive staffing needed for this undertaking, the agency moved passenger screeners to cold, drafty, dusty warehouse-like bag wells with huge bomb-detecting machines. Workers say screeners were assigned to bag wells without training, resulting in injuries. “I've received no training in the lifting of heavy and potentially dangerous luggage and cargo,” says JFK screener Cavalie. “Neither have any of my colleagues. This had led to numerous injuries.” The story is the same at LAX, says Negri. “There are injured screeners on the job because they are lifting 120 pound suitcases without gloves or belts” or secure floor mats to prevent slipping, she says. Lax safety procedures have the potential to lead to even more serious injuries for screeners and may affect passenger safety as well, activists say. “In the room where we're checking for bombs, we don't even have a fire extinguisher,” says Chris Ashcraft, a screener at Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport. “When a fire breaks out in an airport and I have access to a fire extinguisher, the public is better served,” he says. But like other crucial improvements, he says, “none of these things will happen unless the workers have a voice in the workplace.”

Missing paychecks: Without exception, every screener interviewed had seen or experienced egregious problems getting paid properly. At BWI, screener Shawn Franklin worked overtime but didn't get paid for it. “It takes two or three months to get paid, and then it's still not right,” he says. “I've had to borrow money from my family. When you worry about bills at home, your mind is somewhere else—and a suspect bag needs undivided attention,” says Franklin.

“Some people aren't getting paid for weeks,” says Marchetta. Several screeners say there are pay differences between employees doing the same function, while those performing lead or supervisory duties aren't getting paid more as promised. At LaGuardia, screeners got so fed up they created their own website and complaint forms to track problems. Like his colleague Brenda Negri at LAX, Bob Marchetta decided to become an airport screener because it offered “a chance to serve,” he says. But he bristles when he contemplates the irony of Bush administration officials violating some of the most core American rights—including the freedom of association—in the name of defending America's values. “It is patriotic to speak out about being treated fairly,” says Marchetta. “We can serve our nation and not give up democracy.” @

Bush Restricting Rights: 'An Alarming Trend'

	“These employees desperately need a voice on the job now, and AFGE is going to make sure they have that voice.” —AFGE President Bobby Harnage Sr.

The decision to deny airport screeners union rights is the latest in a series of systematic attacks by President George W. Bush and his administration, say union leaders and allies, part of a pattern to diminish the ability of all working people to fight for a voice on the job, decent wages and access to benefits such as health care and pensions. Since taking office in January 2001, Bush has won his campaign to strip union rights from 170,000 workers who were transferred in March to the newly created Homeland Security Department, announced plans to eliminate federal jobs while contracting out the work to private companies and stripped 1,300 workers at the National Imagery and Mapping Agency of their existing bargaining rights.

“It is an alarming trend,” says Lance Compa, Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations lecturer and author of the landmark Human Rights Watch report Unfair Advantage: Workers' Freedom of Association in the United States Under International Human Rights Standards. “For airport workers, what the Bush administration has proposed is clearly a violation of international law,” says Compa, noting the United Nations' passage of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, which states that “everyone has the right to form and join trade unions for the protection of his interests.”

“The [Bush] administration has not explained why it's exempting TSA workers from collective bargaining rights,” says Don Wasserman, former chair of the Federal Labor Relations Authority. “It was done in the name of ‘management flexibility.' I don't know where the inflexibility was. In the days after Sept. 11, the people going into Ground Zero were union members. I didn't notice any ‘inflexibility' on their part. I guess heroes are temporary these days.”

Like the heroes of Sept. 11, 2001, the 1,400 unionized screeners at San Francisco Airport prove erroneous the Bush administration's assertions that unionized workers impede national security. The workers there are part of a pilot program created by federal legislation allowing private contractors to provide screening services at several airports. Employed by Covenant Aviation Security, the workers formed a union with SEIU Local 790 and ratified their contract in December. The contract includes a grievance procedure, a labor–management committee to address health and safety issues, a requirement that job openings be posted and rules about giving workers two-weeks notice of changes in their shifts.

Bush's pattern of denying large groups of workers their right to free association “threatens to cut the heart out of the labor movement,” warns Compa. A recent report from the U.S. General Accounting Office notes that more than 32 million workers—including managers, agricultural workers, many state and local public employees and independent contractors—already don't have bargaining rights. Recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions such as National Labor Relations Board vs. Kentucky River Community Care Inc. make it easier for employers to classify workers as supervisors and likely will cause that figure to rise. Unions “need to build a broad-based coalition with human rights groups, civil rights groups, religious and community allies to develop a political counter-mobilization” to the Bush administration and its allies in Congress and forge strategic alliances to boost organizing, says Compa.

	Silenced: TSA told workers not to talk to "union people" says Shawn Franklin, a screener at BWI.

Undeterred by the Bush administration's actions, airport screeners are continuing to organize. On March 3, 13 screeners gathered in Washington, D.C., to charter a nationwide local especially for Transportation Security Administration (TSA) workers. “If airport screeners and baggage handlers are to keep our skies safe, working conditions must improve,” says AFGE President Bobby Harnage Sr. “These employees desperately need a voice on the job now, and AFGE is going to make sure they have that voice” on Capitol Hill, in the courts and at the worksite, even in the absence of having a collective bargaining contract. The union filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia arguing that Loy does not have the authority to deprive screeners of their right to form a union. Like so many other workers seeking a voice at work, airport screeners face employer interference on the jobsite. “We were told not to talk to the union people,” says Shawn Franklin, a screener at Baltimore-Washington International Airport (BWI). AFGE activists' efforts are boosting workers' morale, says Lynne Holley, a screener at Chicago's Midway Airport who attended the AFGE meeting. “We're excited to be part of this,” she says. “I can go back to Chicago and tell people that there is hope.”

Screeners say they are fighting not only for themselves but national security. “I can see no way that airport screeners will ever be able to adequately protect the flying public and the people of the United States unless we have a say in the working conditions and safety procedures that shape our jobs,” says Les Marzke, a lead screener at Orlando International Airport. “It's not just for me; it's for the American people as well,” adds Chris Ashcraft, a screener at Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport. “They are the ones who pay the taxes going into the paychecks we aren't receiving.” In fiscal year 2002 alone, TSA spent $5.8 billion hiring, training and equipping airport screeners, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation Inspector General. “When there is no one who will hear you out, it's really the public that's getting ripped off,” says Ashcraft. @