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Washington, D.C.—Elaine D. Kaplan, former Special Counsel in the U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC), will join the National Treasury Employees Union as Senior Deputy General Counsel on Aug. 2.

Prior to her appointment by President Clinton to head OSC, Kaplan, who served in that post from 1998 to May 2003, had been an NTEU staff member for many years, including serving as Deputy General Counsel for nearly 10 years.

NTEU President Colleen M. Kelley welcomed Kaplan’s return to the union and praised her effective advocacy for federal employees during her tenure as Special Counsel. “Under Elaine Kaplan, OSC took an activist stance both in protecting the rights of federal employees and in educating the members of the federal workforce about the meaningful rights and remedies, through OSC, that are available to them,” President Kelley said.

The role of OSC is to protect federal employees from any form of retaliation when they disclose violations of law, rule or regulation, or expose gross mismanagement, abuse of authority or a substantial danger to the public. OSC also investigates allegations of prohibited personnel practices against current employees and applicants for federal jobs.

Another of its important duties is to enforce the Hatch Act which defines the rights of federal employees to engage in political activity. In the early 1990s, NTEU played a key role in winning reform of the Hatch Act to broaden the rights of federal workers to participate in the political process.

Kaplan’s experience at NTEU also included the preparation and presentation of legal arguments at all levels of the federal court system, including important constitutional cases dealing with issues under the First Amendment guarantee of free speech and the Fourth Amendment’s protections against unreasonable search and seizure.

Kaplan, who holds a B.A. degree from the State University of New York at Binghamton and a J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center, has considerable Washington experience in addition to her work at NTEU and as Special Counsel. She has worked as an attorney for the State and Local Legal Center in Washington, and as an attorney in the Office of the Solicitor at the U.S. Department of Labor.

Since completing her tenure at OSC, she has been an attorney at a law firm representing plaintiffs in employment and civil rights issues. The nationally-recognized firm specializes in discrimination, sexual harassment, whistleblower retaliation and related matters.

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