Senate OKs bill with labor rights for screeners

The Senate plunged headlong toward a veto faceoff with President Bush on Tuesday by passing a bill that would allow airport passenger and baggage screeners to bargain collectively over their working conditions.

White House officials and congressional Republicans -- accusing the Democrats of bending to organized labor -- contended that the collective-bargaining provision would deny the Transportation Security Administration the flexibility it needs to reassign personnel for maximum passenger safety.

Democrats backing the bill said airport security workers deserved the same negotiation rights enjoyed by most other federal workers.

The Senate approved the legislation 60 to 38; voting for it were 48 Democrats, two independents and 10 Republicans. All of the no votes came from Republicans.

The Senate vote fell short of the two-thirds majority that would be required to override Bush’s veto.

The House this year passed a similar bill by more than two-thirds.

But Rep. John L. Mica of Florida, ranking Republican on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, said he was confident a vote to overcome a veto would fail in that chamber as well. He said he had written commitments from enough Republicans -- including some who supported the bill -- affirming their intention to vote against overriding a veto.

“We already know how this showdown is going to end,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said. “The president threatened to veto any bill that makes airport security more like the Department of Motor Vehicles.”

The controversial collective-bargaining provision is part of a broader domestic security bill designed to implement the remaining recommendations of the independent commission that investigated the Sept. 11 attacks.

McConnell, predicting the bill would become law without the negotiating measure, said the Democrats were delaying its enactment by pushing a provision “for an applause line” from union supporters.

The standoff reflects the new relationship between the administration and a Congress now in Democratic hands.

In six years of working with a GOP-controlled Congress, Bush vetoed one bill -- a measure passed last summer that would have eased limits on human embryonic stem cell research.

In two months of dealing with the Democratic Congress, he has threatened to veto several bills, most prominently any legislation that sought to set timetables for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq or to establish conditions for additional funding of the war effort.

A final version of the domestic security bill is expected to emerge relatively soon from talks between House and Senate leaders.

With both chambers having backed collective bargaining for airport screeners in their bills, that provision seemed likely to be included in the compromise legislation -- setting the stage for Bush’s veto.

Last year, the Sept. 11 commission gave Congress failing grades for leaving undone many of the recommendations the panel outlined in its 2004 report. Democrats pledged during the 2006 congressional campaign that they would try to quickly remedy that if their party took control of Capitol Hill.

“Too many of our communities remain dangerously unprepared to prevent or respond to a terrorist attack,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Tuesday in urging passage of the bill.

The Sept. 11 commission, led by former New Jersey Gov. Thomas H. Kean (R-N.J.) and former Rep. Lee H. Hamilton (D-Ind.), did not address the collective-bargaining issue.

As it cleared the Senate, the bill would tilt federal domestic security grants toward states, such as California and New York, judged to face the greatest risk of terrorist attacks. The House legislation contains similar language.

The Senate rejected a provision of the House bill that would require ship cargo containers from the largest foreign ports to be scanned and sealed within three years and from all ports within five years.

joel.havemann@latimes.com