Excuse me?

I'm going to go out on a limb here and claim that Kip Hawley is a lying bastard. On the off chance that you haven't heard of him, he's the administrator of the Transportation Safety Authority. Here he is explaining why TSA workers should continue to be denied collective bargaining rights:

“We require an infinitely flexible security regime that allows us to change what we do and where we do it,” Mr. Hawley said, adding that hiring staff members to handle union relations would cost $160 million. |link|

Now that I'm on the record, here's a question. How much does it cost to administer a union contract? I'm looking for an answer uninfected by spin from either the AFL-CIO or the Chamber of Commerce. Hawley's numbers work out to $3700 per employee, and would seem to posit hiring a staffer for every 50 or so employees under contract.

Addendum: I forgot to mention one of the most remarkable things about the Hawley quote, which is the way it pairs the truth about management's actual interest in maintaining absolute control with a wild exaggeration about the costs of the policy management opposes.