The TSA workers who just had their collective bargaining agreement voided should strike. It is obnoxious for me, someone outside of the union, to say that they should strike. It’s real easy to say “strike,” but saying it does not take into account the massive logistical efforts usually necessary to pull off a large scale strike; nor does it take into account the very real existential risk that workers put themselves in by going on strike. They can lose their jobs, they can lose their livelihoods, they can lose their homes. It is illegal for federal workers to strike. AFGE, the union, will therefore never call a strike from the top down. A union spokesman today told me “We do not believe they have done this in an appropriate and legal manner. We are evaluating our legal options and will aggressively pursue every possible avenue to defend our members and the safety of the traveling public against this un-American union busting and retaliation.” The union means to take this to court and fight it out there, for whatever that is worth.

Knowing everything in the preceding paragraph to be true, I say again: The TSA workers should strike. Furthermore, the entirety of the labor movement should use whatever financial and logistical and political resources it has to help them strike. I say this not because I think a strike would be easy, but because the alternative to striking when your employer just announces that they are throwing your contract in the trash is to effectively accept that your employer can throw your contract in the trash, and still receive your labor. A union contract is an agreement that says “I will work for you under the conditions agreed to here.” Now, the Trump administration is saying: Work for us under whatever conditions we say. If you continue to work for them, your contract never meant anything.