TSA a Model for Flexibilities?

The law passed last year to create the Transportation Security Administration may become a model for the personnel policies of any new Homeland Security department. That law gave TSA wide discretion over hiring, promotion, firing, compensation and many other personnel practices. TSA has announced that airport screeners, who will make up the large majority of its work force, will have the same benefits as other federal employees in general and recently it agreed to give them a weakened form of whistleblower protection. However, many other issues-prominent among them, whether the screeners will be able to unionize-remain undetermined. During the debate over creating TSA, federal employee unions opposed giving the agency wide latitude over personnel policy, in part because of concern that it would set a precedent for other agencies.