FAA Air Transportation Modernization and Safety Improvement Act

Floor Speech

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Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, first, let me thank my colleague and friend from Mississippi for working with me over the past few days to modify the amendment he originally proposed. I very much appreciated his willingness to sit down and talk about the amendment, and I am pleased to cosponsor Senator Wicker's modified amendment, which provides additional workforce protections for transportation security officers while ensuring the management flexibility that is absolutely vital to the operational efficiency of the TSA and to the security of the American people. Our amendment would provide additional employment protections to TSA employees while preserving the agency's ability to respond quickly and effectively to security and operational challenges.

Through our committee's work on homeland security, I have become convinced that the ability for TSA to respond quickly and effectively to changing conditions, to emerging threats, to new intelligence, to impending crises, even to dramatic weather such as blizzards and hurricanes, is essential. From the intelligence community to our first responders, the key to an effective response is flexibility--the ability to put assets and personnel where they are needed, when they are needed, with a minimum of bureaucracy.

The TSA is charged with a great responsibility. In order to accomplish its critical national security mission, the Aviation and Transportation Security Act provided the TSA Administrator with certain workforce flexibilities. These flexibilities allowed the Administrator to shift resources and to implement new procedures whenever needed--daily, even hourly, in some cases--in response to emergencies, canceled flights, changing circumstances, or threats to our security. This authority has enabled TSA to make the best and fullest use of its highly trained and dedicated workforce.

I want to point out that this debate is not just theoretical. We are not talking about having some theoretical flexibility. We have already seen the benefits of this flexibility. We have seen exactly why it is necessary.

Let me give a couple of examples. In the aftermath of the thwarted airline liquids bombing plot that emanated from Great Britain, TSA was able to move quickly to change the nature of its employees' work and even the location of that work. With the liquids bombing plot, TSA, overnight, had to retrain its employees, had to deploy them differently, and was able to do so precisely because of the flexibility of the current law.

Another example is the December 2006 blizzard that hit the Denver area. When many local TSA employees were unable to get to the airport, TSA was able to act quickly, flying in volunteer TSA employees from Las Vegas to cover the shifts, and covering the Las Vegas shifts with officers who were transferred temporarily from Salt Lake City. Without that ability to deploy personnel where they were needed on a moment's notice, the Denver airport would have been critically understaffed while hundreds, perhaps thousands of travelers were stranded. This flexibility is essential to maintain, and that is what the Wicker-Collins-Coburn amendment would do.

TSA also redeployed hundreds of screeners to Houston and New Orleans in response to hurricanes in 2008. These TSOs relieved local employees at those airports so that they could safely evacuate themselves and their families, and it helped to quickly resume screening operations after the storms had passed.

These were challenging times for TSA. Evacuations in these cities caused high volumes of airline passengers resulting in the TSOs in New Orleans screening more than 32,000 gulf coast residents within a 48-hour period.

TSA's announcement on Friday purports to preclude employees from bargaining over security policies and procedures. But if we look at precisely what it says, it does allow bargaining over the selection process for special assignments and on policies for transfers and shift trading--matters that could require very rapid resolution during an emergency. There will not be time for bargaining over those issues.

In addition, the very definition of what constitutes security policies and procedures could be the subject of dispute and litigation. That is exactly the point Secretary Chertoff made in a letter he sent to me in 2007 when the Senate was considering this very same issue. He wrote:

Although the administrator of TSA purportedly would not be required to bargain over responses to emergencies or imminent threats, it is inevitable that protracted litigation would ensue over the meaning of these terms.

That is exactly what would happen if we allow to stand the decision of the Administrator of TSA. Instead of drastically changing the TSA personnel system in a way that would interfere with TSA's ability to carry out its mission, there is an alternative. We should make some targeted but critical reforms in the personnel system to ensure that TSA's employees are treated fairly.

My point is there is a middle ground that we can reach, and that is what the modified amendment does. First, we should bring TSA employees under the Whistleblower Protections Act, which safeguards the rights of whistleblowers throughout the Federal Government. There is simply no reason to deny TSA employees that protection. Indeed, I would argue it hurts us to deny that protection because if there is a whistleblower at this critical agency who does not feel fully protected and does not come forward, that could hurt our security. So our amendment would codify that coverage and make that protection clear.

Second, we should make clear that TSA members do have the right to join a union. That is a different issue from collective bargaining. Some of them have chosen to be represented by a union now. Many have not chosen to be. But they should have that choice. That allows, for example, for them to get representation by a union if there is an adverse employment action. Our amendment specifically provides that we are not depriving employees of that choice.

Third, we should give TSA employees the right to an independent appeal of adverse personnel actions such as removals, suspensions for more than 14 days, reductions in pay or grade, or certain furloughs. The amendment would give TSOs the right to have those appeals heard by the Merit Systems Protection Board. That is an independent board, separate from the agency, separate from the Department of Homeland Security, that sits in judgment of appeals filed by most other Federal employees. So I see no reason TSA screeners should not have that same right. That is an important protection because if a screener believes he or she is being treated unfairly by a supervisor, there is an independent arbitrator to whom that employee can appeal.

Here is the bottom line. We can provide TSA employees with important protections enjoyed by other Federal employees, such as the right to appeal adverse employment actions to the Merit Systems Protection Board and the statutory right to whistleblower protections without disrupting TSA's proven personnel system that has served the agency and this Nation well over the past decade. Previous Secretaries of Homeland Security and Administrators of TSA have described that personnel system in great detail to the Homeland Security Committee and to other entities, in the Senate in both classified briefings and open hearings, as necessary to accomplish the critical goals of TSA. Our amendment would preserve these flexible personnel systems while ensuring that TSA employees enjoy important legal protections available to other Federal employees.

I have been trying since 2007 to achieve a middle ground on this issue. Frankly, the previous administration was reluctant on some of the safeguards I have described. This administration has gone way overboard in the other direction, but a middle ground is exactly what this modified amendment strikes. It charts that middle ground, providing significant additional protections and rights to TSA employees without burdening a system that is working well now and that is essential to our security.

We simply have to allow the TSA Administrator to retain exactly the same kinds of flexibility to deploy personnel that he enjoys now and that have been used in the past. That is the important point. This debate is not theoretical. Those personnel flexibilities have proven absolutely essential to meet the threat of a terrorist attack and to deal with blizzards and hurricanes. I urge my colleagues to take a strong, close look at the modified amendment. I hope they will support it.

I yield the floor.

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