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Washington, D.C.—The leader of the nation’s largest independent union of federal employees today called on House conferees to agree to Senate-approved language in a supplemental appropriations bill that would pay federal employees who also are active duty members of the National Guard and Reserves the difference between their military and civil service earnings. The House version of the supplemental defense funding bill, H.R. 4939, does not include such language.

The federal government “has reached out to private sector employers and made a good and persuasive case as to the hardship this pay gap creates,” said President Colleen M. Kelley of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU).

Many employers, she said, including businesses from among the largest corporations to small business, “have risen to this patriotic call and offered continuation of pay, benefits or both to their activated citizen-soldier employees.”

Yet, Kelley said in letters to Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA), chairman of the House Appropriations Committee and Rep. David Obey (D-WI), ranking member, “for the 37,000 members of the National Guard who are employed in their civilian jobs by the federal government, no such opportunity is available.”

The result, the union leader said, “is a loss of pay due to their additional service to their country even while they serve side by side with others whose private sector employers have heeded this request.”

NTEU members, she said, “cannot understand how the federal government can ask private sector employees to do what the government will not do itself,” noting that Comptroller General David Walker also has faulted the government for failing to “lead by example” in connection with the vital issue of employer support for National Guard and Reserve members.

“I hope the (House-Senate) Conference Committee will be able to act favorably on this request,” President Kelley wrote to the committee chairman.

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