Why Do TSA Employees Spend so Much Time on Union Business?
3rd October 2026
Twenty-five years after the 9/11 attacks, we hardly need reminding that aviation security can never be taken for granted. But we got one anyway.
On Sept. 30, a Flydubai flight carrying 174 passengers from Dubai to Tel Aviv made an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia after the co-pilot stabbed the captain and, according to Israeli officials, attempted to crash the aircraft.
The details are extraordinary, and the lesson is simple. Threats can emerge without warning, and aviation security depends on trained people being ready to respond.
That is why Americans should pay attention to a newly filed Transportation Security Administration record detailing the operational burden of the agency’s 2024 collective bargaining agreement. The federal government is now appealing a court injunction keeping that agreement in force.
Americans for Fair Treatment, of which I am CEO, has been fighting this battle for years. Congress never expressly granted collective bargaining rights to TSA screeners. The current union system began with a 2011 decision by Obama-era TSA Administrator John Pistole.
The legal questions belong to the courts, but TSA’s own record raises a broader question: How much union bureaucracy should a national security agency be expected to absorb?
Jerry Pournelle was fond of saying that the purpose of government was to hire and pay government employees.