New York TSA agents seek answers amid contract cancellation

After Transportation Security Administration officers learned their union contract would no longer be honored, Copiague resident and longtime TSA employee Thomas Schoregge was told his union office at Kennedy Airport would be closed and he had to report back to "the line."

"As soon as the announcement came out on Friday, the agency started kicking people out of their office spaces that were given to us under the contract," said Schoregge, 45, who joined the Department of Homeland Security's TSA in 2002. 

Schoregge, regional vice president for TSA union members in New York, New Jersey, New England and Delaware, is one of the 47,000 TSA employees nationwide to have their collective bargaining agreement — signed last May —   and union status canceled via a DHS memo, the union representing the security workers said.

Union officials could not immediately say how many Long Islanders work for the TSA, but about 2,500 officers work at Kennedy in Queens, Schoregge said. 

"Today, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced it is ending collective bargaining for the Transportation Security Administration's (TSA) Transportation Security Officers, which has constrained TSA’s chief mission: to safeguard our transportation systems and keep Americans safe," DHS said in a press release published to its website last week.

The release coincides with a March 7 letter sent to TSA employees notifying them and their union of the change. The Friday notices follow a Feb. 27 memo issued by Kristi Noem, Homeland Security secretary, to Adam Stahl, TSA chief of staff, notifying him of the change, according to documents obtained by Newsday.

Long Island is home to 16 operational airports, according to Federal Aviation Administration records. However, all but a few — Long Island MacArthur Airport in Ronkonkoma, Republic Airport in Farmingdale and Francis S. Gabreski Airport in Westhampton Beach — serve smaller, noncommercial aircraft, are simply a landing strip without tower control, or are for private use, lacking any TSA presence.

An employee at Gabreski Airport confirmed that TSA has no presence there. Representatives for MacArthur and Republic airports referred questions on the number of TSA officers that work at the airports to DHS.

A DHS spokesperson said in an email that it does not share TSA officer numbers "as that is considered security sensitive information."

The TSA, created in 2001 in response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, has been unionized since 2011 and is represented by the American Federation of Government Employees.

"We think it’s an attack on labor as a whole," said David Gonzalez, national vice president for District 2 of the AFGE, a union representing federal employees nationwide.

"We’re going to continue to fight this administration," said Gonzalez, whose district includes federal workers in New York.

Cathy Creighton, a former labor attorney at the National Labor Relations Board, agreed that the cancellation was "unprecedented."

"I do not believe it’s legal and I believe it will be contested by AFGE," said Creighton, director of Cornell University’s Industrial Labor Relations Buffalo Co-Lab, a research and training organization focused on public policies that advances economic equity.

A DHS spokesperson referred questions on the legality of its decision to cancel TSA’s right to unionize to its press release.