WATCH LIVE: Duffy and TSA officials hold a news briefing on holiday travel

The Transportation Security Administration is renewing Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s push to end a collective bargaining agreement with airport screening officers — the second such attempt this year, just one month after the longest government shutdown on record.

Duffy is scheduled to speak at 10 a.m. ET. Watch in the player above.

The agency said Friday that the move builds on a September memo from Noem — issued months after a federal judge blocked her earlier guidance — that said TSA screeners “have an essential national security function” and therefore should not participate in collective bargaining or be represented by the union.

The American Federation of Government Employees quickly vowed to fight the decision, calling it illegal and in violation of the initial June order that halted Noem’s first attempt to terminate the contract covering 47,000 workers.

In the September memo cited by the TSA, Noem acknowledged the injunction but did not explain why she concluded that it did not prevent her from pursuing the same outcome through new guidance while the case remains pending. The injunction barred the TSA from canceling the union contract or enforcing Noem’s orders to dismiss pending grievances, but did not say whether its restrictions would extend to future directives from Noem.

“It certainly seems like they’re using every loophole to try to eliminate the collective bargaining rights of TSA officers,” Johnny Jones, treasurer of the TSA workers’ bargaining unit, said Friday in a phone interview.

The Transportation Security Administration on Friday declined to comment on the union’s assertions. An email request for comment was sent to the Department of Homeland Security.
The agency said it plans to cancel the current seven-year contract in January and replace it with a “new security-focused framework.” The agreement, which was reached last May, was supposed to expire in 2031.

Airport screening workers “need to focus on their mission of keeping travelers safe,” TSA Acting Deputy Administrator Adam Stahl said in a statement.

“Under Secretary Noem’s leadership, we are ridding the agency of wasteful, time-consuming activities that have distracted our officers from their critical work,” Stahl said.

The announcement also comes weeks after Noem held a news conference in which she handed $10,000 bonus checks to TSA officers who she said did “more than enough” during the 43-day shutdown, when thousands of airport screeners continued to report for duty despite losing more than six weeks of pay during the funding shutdown.

“This is how they will be paid for coming to work every day during the government shutdown?” Jones said, calling the agency’s decision “a slap in the face to the people they hand checks to.”

Noem issued her first memorandum last February, in which she canceled the collective bargaining agreement. But the union filed a lawsuit, claiming the move was retaliation for AFGE’s resistance to Trump administration actions affecting federal workers, such as firing probationary employees. A trial is currently scheduled for next year.

In granting the preliminary injunction in June, U.S. District Judge Marsha Beckman of Seattle said the order was necessary to preserve the rights and benefits TSA workers have long enjoyed under union representation.

Pechman wrote that AFGE showed in its lawsuit that Noem’s directive “constituted impermissible retaliation,” likely violated union due process, and was “arbitrary and capricious” — findings that the judge said made it likely that AFGE would ultimately prevail.

AFGE represents about 800,000 federal government employees and has been declining as the Trump administration has laid the groundwork to weaken or eliminate protections for federal employees in an effort to trim bureaucracy.