FAA Air Transportation Modernization and Safety Improvement Act--Continued--

Floor Speech

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Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I am pleased to be a cosponsor of the amendment of Senator Wicker to provide additional workforce protections for Transportation Security Officers while at the same time ensuring the management flexibility that is vital to the operational efficiency of the TSA, and thus the security of the American people. Instead of dramatically changing the TSA personnel system in a way that could interfere with TSA's ability to carry out its essential mission, as the administration plans, we should, instead, make some targeted but important reforms in the system to ensure that TSA employees are treated fairly.

First, we should bring TSA employees under the Whistleblower Protection Act, which safeguards the rights of whistleblowers throughout the Federal Government.

Second, we should give TSA workers the right to an independent appeal of adverse personnel actions--for example, a demotion would qualify. What we are proposing is that a TSA employee so affected would be able to appeal to the Merit Systems Protection Board.

Third, we should make clear that TSA members can, in fact, join a union. That is a different issue from collective bargaining. So our amendment specifically provides that we are not depriving employees of that choice--which they have right now.

I have just received a letter from former TSA Administrator Kip Hawley, who was extremely well regarded and served as the head of TSA for 4 years. He expresses support for the amendment that Senator Wicker and I are offering. Mr. Hawley knows firsthand how important it is for TSA to have the flexibility in order to respond quickly and effectively to changing conditions, to emerging threats, to new intelligence, and to impending crises. I note this is not theoretical. TSA has used this authority in the past.

In 2006, for example, TSA had to respond virtually overnight to the liquids plot to blow up airplanes that originated in Great Britain. Overnight, TSA had to retrain its workers and redeploy them to different airports. This is not a theoretical concern.

Another example was the blizzard that occurred in Denver, where TSA screeners had to be flown in from another city to cover the shifts of TSA employees at that airport. This kind of management flexibility was also used in the wake of the gulf coast hurricanes when there were massive evacuations.

In his letter, Mr. Hawley states that although TSA's recent determination states that security policies and procedures will not be issues subject to collective bargaining, the dividing line between security and nonsecurity practices ``is not a bright one.''

He makes the same point that former Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff made the last time we debated this issue, and that is defining what is and what is not subject to collective bargaining undoubtedly will be subject to subsequent litigation.

He further notes:

The resolution of these issues could rest with an arbitrator with no direct knowledge of security issues, intelligence, and transportation security. [This could] place the performance of TSA's security mission in the hands of someone who neither has the expertise to make these decisions, nor [a person who] is accountable for them.

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