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Washington, D.C.—The head of the union representing frontline homeland security employees today called for a rational policy regarding the wearing of protective masks by employees during the swine flu outbreak that gives more weight to the importance of their ability to protect their health than to the potential for public alarm.

In testimony before a House subcommittee today, President Colleen M. Kelley of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) sharply criticized leaders of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Transportation Security Administration (TSA) units for failing to provide a clear and reasonable policy allowing the donning of a mask at an employee’s discretion.

As part of her testimony before the House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on the Federal Workforce, the NTEU leader presented affidavits from a number of NTEU-represented employees in CBP detailing what, in effect, are instances of abusive behavior by supervisors in preventing employees from wearing respirator masks and ordering those being worn to be removed.

“Some of them are disturbingly threatening, and some include comments indicating the reason for the prohibition was fear of alarming the public,” Kelley said. She added that “the affidavits also confirm that the policy has not been disseminated in writing and that employees’ request for written guidance on the issue have been denied.”

Further, she said, the affidavits refute DHS assertions in the media indicating that managers who were preventing the wearing of masks were misinformed about the agency’s actual policy. During this time period, a DHS spokesman was quoted as saying the department had not issued an order saying employees could not wear masks; also, Kelley said, a CBP spokesperson told an interviewer that officers were provided personal protection gear which they could utilize at their discretion.

All this was occurring while CBP and TSA clearly were enforcing a prohibition, Kelley said. “The idea that a few managers were misinformed is clearly not accurate.”

Kelley told the subcommittee, chaired by Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.), that after researching possible medical or scientific reasons for prohibiting the optional wearing of masks at CBP and TSA, “NTEU is convinced that the reasons are not based on science or medicine, but on public relations.”

In NTEU’s view, she said, “avoiding unnecessarily alarming the public is not without merit; however, it is one factor that must be weighed against the potential health risks to employees, their families and others. It is difficult to weight the competing factors when there is a refusal to even acknowledge them.”

Kelley noted that general guidelines provided by the Centers for Disease Control, which recommend avoiding crowds and maintaining a distance of six feet from those exhibiting illness, are simply not possible for these frontline workers. “They can interact with thousands of travelers in a single shift,” she said.

Since this outbreak, NTEU repeatedly has sought to obtain a clear written policy from these agencies. President Kelley has written letters, without formal response, to agency heads; has communicated to the agencies on this issue by electronic mail; and has issued a variety of public statements and conducted a number of media interviews. “To say it is disappointing that the agencies have failed to provide responsive answers thus is to significantly understate their actions,” Kelley said.

The union leader said the hard-working men and women who have followed the directives of local managers and been denied the right to wear protective masks deserve better.

In particular, she said, “They deserve to know what the policies are. They deserve to know who is responsible for making those policies. They deserve to know the reasons for the policies. They deserve to have the opportunity to provide information to the policymakers, and in this instance, they need the policy to be changed.”

NTEU is the largest independent federal union, representing 150,000 employees in 31 agencies and departments, including the entire 22,000-employee CBP workforce and thousands of TSA passenger screeners at major airports across the country.