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Washington, D.C.—As it has throughout 2013, the nation’s largest independent union of federal employees continues to celebrate its 75th anniversary of representing and advocating on behalf of the dedicated men and women who make up the nation’s federal workforce.

“We began with a small group of Internal Revenue employees in 1938 seeking civil service protection,” said NTEU President Colleen M. Kelley. “Over the years, NTEU has played a pivotal role in helping shape the civil service that performs so many vital functions for the American people.” From its early days, NTEU has grown to represent 150,000 employees in 31 agencies and departments.

The union’s 75th anniversary has been part of all of NTEU’s activities throughout the year and will be celebrated at chapter events around the country later this month during the union’s annual Labor Recognition Week—a time set aside to recognize the contributions of frontline federal employees.

Among NTEU’s many broad-based accomplishments, it won the right for federal employees to engage in informational picketing; led the fight for greater employee participation in the political process through reform of the Hatch Act; secured expanded whistleblower rights, telework programs and alternative work schedules; negotiated contracts that have set the standard in the federal sector; turned back Department of Homeland Security efforts to strip federal workers of most of their rights; protected the merit-based, competitive hiring system; won the right to engage in midterm bargaining; and many others.

In honor of its rich history, NTEU has launched a website exploring the many ways NTEU has helped shape the country’s civil service. The website, www.nteu75.org, contains an extensive display of photos, chapter charters, letters and other memorabilia, all reflecting aspects of the union’s 75-year history.

NTEU represents employees at one of the nation’s oldest agencies—now Customs and Border Protection, but initially the U.S. Customs Service; and at its newest, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

While it began in the Treasury Department with the agency that became the Internal Revenue Service, NTEU has over the years broadened its representation to a diverse cross-section of agencies, including those within the Department of Health and Human Service, many of the nation’s financial regulatory agencies, and others, both large and small.

“The story of NTEU is a proud history of dedicated men and women committed not just to the public they serve, but to each other as part of NTEU,” President Kelley said. “It is a story with as bright a future as a past.”