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Washington, D.C.—The necessary and hard work of building bipartisan congressional support on federal employee issues plays a vital role not only in the lives of federal workers, but in the life of the country as well, the leader of the nation’s largest independent union of federal employees told a large gathering of union members today.

President Colleen M. Kelley of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) delivered that message to some 400 NTEU chapter leaders and activists gathered for the union’s annual Legislative Conference, which runs through Thursday.

“Many in Congress already recognize the valuable and valid contributions of a workforce that is respected, listened to and fully engaged” in workplace decisions, President Kelley said. “But there are many more who need to be convinced.”

And that, she said, is the continuing job of NTEU leaders across the country. “I say our role, our presence, has never been more important, more vital and more critical,” she said.

Kelley emphasized that political attacks on federal workers are, in a very real sense, attacks on the American people, given the key roles that a valued and respected federal workforce play in the life of the country.

She was joined at the opening session of the three-day conference by Sen. John F. Kerry (D-MA), who spoke to conference participants by phone from Boston, where snow forced cancellation of his flight to Washington.

Kerry thanked NTEU for its early and strong support during the presidential election, and urged NTEU members “not to lose (your) sense of decency, of outrage, of what is right.”

The nation is less divided than political commentators would have people think, Sen. Kerry said. “Everyone has the same hopes and aspirations.” He encouraged the NTEU members to “turn issues into voting issues,” arguing that “too many of my colleagues can vote against your interest, and then go home with impunity.”

President Kelley briefly reviewed NTEU’s priority legislative issues, including privatization, both of federal jobs and Social Security; the need for fair pay and appropriate benefits, including affordable health care, for federal workers; and the fight against administration efforts to extend throughout the federal workplace the regressive personnel rules it intends to implement in the Departments of Homeland Security and Defense.

“When you return home this week” after meeting with members of Congress, she told conference participants, “I ask that you carry the message back that NTEU needs each and every federal employee to be involved in this fight for fairness—to be unyielding in our stance on these issues and to be diligent in communicating to their elected representatives about the tools federal employees need to do the work of our country.,”

She added that members of Congress “need to hear this over and over again.”

As the largest independent federal union, NTEU represents some 150,000 employees in 30 agencies and departments.