Labor & Employment Law

DeMint: If TSA Workers Join Union, They?ll Let Terrorists In

By Mike Hall

After the now infamous Christmas day “crotch bomber” episode on Northwest Airlines Flight 253, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) couldn’t keep his anti-union bile from bubbling out of his mouth.

DeMint, who has single-handedly bottled up the nomination of Erroll Southers to head the Transportation Security Agency (TSA), screeched that if TSA workers were allowed to unionize, terrorists clothed in plastic explosive-laden underwear or shoes or ball caps would begin blasting airplanes out of the sky on a regular basis.

BTW, the Obama administration supports the radical idea that TSA workers should be allowed to choose whether to join a union. Workers should have the choice, not officious senators.

Journalist Art Levine at Truthout talked with several security experts who blew DeMint’s twisted logic out of the water. And as Marshall McClain, who works a canine unit at LAX and is president of the Los Angeles Peace Officers Association, tells Levine:

My union card doesn’t sit between my bulletproof vest and my willingness to put my life on the line…His [DeMint's] claims about unionization and homeland security have no validity.

Read Art’s entire column here.

Check out Spencer Ackerman’s take on DeMint’s demented claims at The Washington Independent and Michael Whitney’s column on FireDogLake who calls DeMint’s claims “quite obviously, ludicrous.”

For more on TSA workers and unions, read our own James Parks’ coverage here.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on January 04, 2010 (boomark / email).