The union for Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) employees is suing Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem after she said she was ending a collective bargaining agreement signed last year.
The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) argues Noem has no power to end an already authorized seven-year contract, accusing the secretary of targeting the union after it brought a number of suits on behalf of government workers
“The 2024 CBA has a term of seven years and allows limited midterm bargaining. This collective bargaining agreement, like any other, is a binding contract,” the union wrote in the suit.
It went on to call the move “an act of retaliation by the Trump administration against Plaintiff AFGE because of its exercise of its First Amendment right to litigate to protect federal workers.”
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) first publicized the move last week, though Noem signed an order rescinding the contract last month.
In that announcement, the DHS also leveled a number of claims against the union, including that TSA workers “will no longer lose their hard-earned dollars to a union that does not represent them.”
The DHS also claimed TSA had more officers working on union work than screening passengers in 86 percent of airports — something the AFGE said was mathematically impossible.
The AFGE said Noem “targeted AFGE by name, asserting without any evidence that AFGE was harming transportation security officers” and included “false claims about the number of AFGE officials using official time.”
“The decision by Secretary Noem to rescind the 2024 CBA, end collective bargaining mid-contract, and terminate existing grievances violates the First and Fifth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, is arbitrary and capricious, and is contrary to law,” they wrote in the suit, bringing claims under the Administrative Procedures Act as well as the two amendments.
TSA workers do not have full Title 5 rights to collective bargaining given to all other federal workers, though the Biden administration granted those powers through a 2021 administrative action.
Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) and Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) have introduced legislation that would put TSA employees under the same payment and workers rights regime as all other federal employees.
