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Washington, D.C.—Failure to provide newly-hired airport security personnel with the rights and pay of other federal employees sharply increases the risk the nation will not be able to reach its important goal of improved travel security, the head of the nation’s largest independent union of federal workers said today.

In a letter to Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta, President Colleen M. Kelley of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) strongly urged that the department “not deny these federal workers the basic benefits and rights all other federal employees have.”

Under the Aviation and Transportation Security Act, passed late last year, a newly appointed Transportation Undersecretary has wide-ranging discretion as to the rights, duties and compensation of newly hired airport security screeners.

Kelley repeated the assertions she made in the wake of passage of that act that while qualification standards for security personnel are important, the broader and more important issue is extension to these employees of the rights and protections of the nation’s civil service laws—a matter not yet addressed.

“It is in the sound interest of the government and the flying public,” Kelley said in her letter to Mineta, “that these workers have the same rights to health and life insurance, retirement benefits, whistleblower protection, equal employment opportunity, representational rights and job promotion as any other civil servant.”

Kelley reminded the secretary that “the American public is well aware of the dangers of hiring airport security personnel on the cheap, with no benefits and without standard job protections”—such as is very often the case with outside contractors hired by airports to provide screening and security services.

While praising both Congress and President Bush for “acting wisely” to restore confidence in flying, to protect the public and to stop the loss of commerce, the NTEU leader wrote that “this can all be quickly lost” if the newly-established Transportation Security Administration (TSA) within the department “fails to attract security personnel who are of the quality and skills needed to perform their duties.”

She added in her letter: “I hope I can count on you not to deny these workers their fundamental rights and protections.”