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Washington, D.C.—The head of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) today called on Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary Samuel Bodman to “reverse course” and bolster the department’s environmental safety and health function rather than submerging it into the DOE security function. DOE’s safety and health employees play key roles in ensuring the safety of more than 130,000 public and private employees.
In a letter to Secretary Bodman, NTEU President Colleen M. Kelley said that commingling safety and health responsibilities with entirely separate security functions “will undoubtedly result in the safety and health functions becoming subordinate priorities” to security.
Moreover, she said, the agency decision will result in a loss of safety and health accountability, since its specific missions no longer would be carried out under the leadership of an assistant secretary. “NTEU is concerned that these changes will have a direct and negative effect on the lives of many (DOE) employees and citizens across the country,” Kelley said.
The union’s concerns about the impact of the DOE reorganization are underscored by the views expressed to DOE by multiple members of the Senate and House, by former DOE secretaries and by various state governors—many of whom have asked the department to rethink its elimination of environmental safety and health as a separate function.
NTEU represents more than 125 DOE employees in the specialized health and safety functions, and nearly 1,700 DOE employees overall, in two chapters—at DOE headquarters and at a facility in Germantown, Md.
President Kelley reminded the DOE secretary of the agency’s responsibility to bargain with the union over the impact and implementation of any organizational changes it makes, and to maintain the status quo until bargaining is complete. “I urge DOE to ensure that all of its managers are aware of the agency’s bargaining obligations,” she wrote to the secretary.
NTEU is the largest independent federal union, representing some 150,000 federal workers in 30 agencies and departments.