Let’s Blame the Unions

How difficult will it be to enact labor law reform? The Republicans have dedicated themselves to portraying the Obama presidency as a failure and they oppose everything the Democrats attempt to do. Will it be any different with the Employee Free Choice Act?


     Senator DeMint Uses Botched Bombing to Attack Organized Labor


                Who’s Running the TSA? No One, Thanks to Sen. Jim DeMint 


WASHINGTON — An attempt to blow up a trans-Atlantic flight from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day would be all-consuming for the administrator of the Transportation Security Administration — if there were one.

The post remains vacant because Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., has held up President Barack Obama’s nominee in opposition to the prospect of TSA workers joining a labor union.

As al Qaida claimed Are you smarter than a DeMint? responsibility Monday for the thwarted attack and President Barack Obama made a public statement about it, Democrats urged DeMint to drop his objection and allow quick confirmation of nominee Erroll Southers, a counterterrorism expert, when the Senate reconvenes in three weeks.

Southers, a former FBI special agent, is the Los Angeles World Airports Police Department assistant chief for homeland security and intelligence. He also is the associate director of the University of Southern California’s Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events, and he served as a deputy director of homeland security for California Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.


Two Senate committees have given Southers their bipartisan blessing. An acting administrator is in place pending his confirmation. Marshall McClain, the president of the Los Angeles Airport Peace Officers Association, said that the Senate should have acted sooner to confirm Southers.

DeMint said in a statement that the attempted attack “is a perfect example of why the Obama administration should not unionize the TSA.” He wants Southers to clarify his stand on unionizing the TSA, a shift that Democrats support.

Without collective bargaining, DeMint said, the TSA has “flexibility to make real-time decisions that allowed it to quickly improve security measures in response to this attempted attack.”

If organized labor got involved, DeMint said, union bosses would have the power “to veto or delay future security improvements at our airports.”
Margaret Talev, McClatchy Newspapers