Labor & Employment Law

TSA Nominee Southers Withdraws, Citing ?Partisan Climate? That Risks U.S. Security

By Mike Hall

Erroll Southers, the choice of President Obama to head the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and whose nomination was held hostage by Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) because DeMint opposes allowing TSA workers the freedom to form a union, withdrew his name from consideration today.

During the 2008 campaign, Obama pledged to make bargaining rights for TSA workers a priority. In 2003, President George W. Bush took bargaining rights away from transportation security officers (TSOs) and other workers at the TSA in one of the first shots in his war on America’s workers.

DeMint has even made the ludicrous claim that if TSOs were allowed to unionize, national security would be put at risk and terrorist attacks on the United States could increase.

Southers, assistant chief for homeland security at Los Angeles International Airport and a former FBI agent, said:

It is clear that my nomination has become a lightning rod for those who have chosen to push a political agenda at the risk of the safety and security of the American people. This partisan climate is unacceptable, and I refuse to allow myself to remain part of their dialogue.  I am not a politician. I’m a counterrrorism expert.

Although TSA workers have been denied the freedom to bargain collectively, 12,000 of them are members of AFGE, which regularly represents them before the TSA Disciplinary Review Board, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Congress and in the courts.

Said AFGE President John Gage:

With the sudden development of Erroll Southers withdrawing his name from consideration to lead the Transportation Security Administration, the American Federation of Government Employees will continue to urgently press the Obama administration for strong leadership at the helm of TSA. The flying public is better served with stable, cohesive leadership at an agency which is vital to our nation’s homeland security.

For the latest news on the drive to win rights for TSA workers, be sure to visit AFGE’s website here.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on January 20, 2010 (boomark / email).