Organized labor divided over future of airport security screeners

By LEIGH STROPE
AP Labor Writer

WASHINGTON – Organized labor isn't completely organized when it comes to the idea of government-employed airport security screeners.

Several unions are running television ads this week supporting the plan, which the House is scheduled to vote on Wednesday.

But President Bush and the House GOP leadership, which oppose federalizing airport security, are finding an unlikely ally in the AFL-CIO's largest union, the Service Employees International Union, which represents about 2,000 screeners and has been trying to organize them nationally.

Hiring the nation's 28,000 screeners as government employees "would be a massive undertaking that nobody is saying could happen fast," said Jono Shaffer, SEIU's director of security organizing. "We think there is a much more streamlined way to make changes that would result in dramatic improvements very fast."

With federalization, other unions see 28,000 new federal workers that quickly could become unionized. SEIU sees its organizing efforts over the last few years threatened.

Most everyone agrees the current system needs to change. Airlines contract out airport screening operations to private security companies. The screeners they hire have at times come with dubious backgrounds and poor training. They often have no benefits and starting wages are lower than those of workers at the airport fast-food restaurants.

A recent report by the General Accounting Office, an investigative arm of Congress, found that the average screener turnover rate over a one-year period was 126 percent. At St. Louis it was 416 percent, and at Atlanta 375 percent.

Lawmakers are looking at paying government screeners a starting wage close to that of a starting customs agent, around $25,000 a year. A $2.50 tax each way on airline tickets would cover the higher wages.

But SEIU, security companies and many Republicans are looking to Europe and Israel as models. There, airlines are removed from the security business and governments set standards and closely oversee well-trained and well-paid private screeners.

"We're going to have the largest increase in the federal government work force since LBJ's Great Society for no apparent reason," said former FAA official Kenneth Quinn, now a lobbyist for the security companies.

The new ads running this week in the District of Columbia, Northern Virginia and Maryland are being paid for by the American Federation of Government Employees, Association of Flight Attendants, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and the National Treasury Employees Union.

"This is the Capitol. It's where Congress works," the ads say, showing a photo of the Capitol. "Keeping it safe is the job of federal law enforcement personnel."

Then viewers see an airport. "This is an airport, where keeping the rest of us safe is the job of contractors paying barely the minimum wage, who sometimes even hire convicted felons," the ads say.

"Congress deserves federal protection. So why not the rest of us?"

The ads urge viewers to call their representatives and tell them that airport safety "isn't a job for the lowest bidder."

House Democrats are backing a bill the Senate unanimously passed nearly three weeks ago that would put all airport screeners on the federal payroll. Smaller airports with only a few flights a day would have the option of using local or state law enforcement personnel, but the federal government would cover their pay for screening.

House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, said the plan was a ploy to help Democrats.

"What the Democrats are pushing for here is that Congress write a law that says everybody that is screening at the airports must be a federal employee and, thereby, a member of the union – federal union that happens also to be their most generous single contributor to their campaign – 30,000 new dues paying members to that campaign finance instrument," Armey said Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press."

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