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Washington, D.C.—There is an urgent need for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to provide its employees with a clear and rational policy on the wearing of personal protective equipment before a widely-predicted return this fall of the potentially-deadly swine flu.

That was the message presented by the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) to a key Senate subcommittee examining pandemic influenza preparedness and the federal workforce. The World Health Organization has declared the current H1N1 outbreak of swine flu is now a global pandemic.

In its testimony, the union said “DHS and its components need to have a rational policy on this issue now, before this fall, when many predict a more virulent form of the H1N1 virus will return.” NTEU’s hope, it said, is that today’s hearing of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management, together with actions recently taken by the House, “will help achieve that very modest goal.” The subcommittee is chaired by Sen. Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii).

The House action NTEU referred to is the inclusion of an amendment offered by Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.) to the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) authorization bill ensuring the right of TSA employees to wear protective masks while performing their homeland security duties. Initially, he sought to offer an amendment providing rights regarding personal protective equipment for all DHS employees. For now, however, he could offer only the TSA-directed amendment, since the authorization measure covers only TSA.

NTEU President Colleen M. Kelley has been an outspoken advocate on behalf of employees—including U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and TSA—in seeking clear direction from their agencies on their right to use protective equipment at their discretion, including masks.

“CBP and TSA employees can interact with thousands of travelers in a single shift,” President Kelley said. “Their work, including reviewing immigration documents, wanding passengers, questioning them and sometimes patting them down, or detaining them, requires them to be within six feet of the travelers they process.”

General guidance offered to many DHS employees recommended that they avoid crowds and maintain a distance of six feet from those exhibiting illness. “The guidelines are neither realistic nor workable for these employees,” NTEU said.

And as it did in a presentation to Rep. Lynch’s Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on the Federal Workforce, the union provided the Senate body with a number of affidavits from NTEU-represented homeland security workers telling of “disturbingly threatening” conduct by supervisors acting to prevent employees from wearing protective masks and making those wearing such equipment remove it.

“The affidavits also confirm that the policy has not been disseminated in writing and that employees’ requests for written guidance on the issue have been denied,” NTEU said in its testimony, adding that it trusts “this committee will ensure that the employees providing these affidavits will be free from any negative impact.”

The union used its testimony to reassert its view on the reason for the continuing failure of these agencies to act on this vital issue. “After researching possible scientific or medical reasons for prohibiting the optional wearing of masks at CBP and TSA, NTEU is convinced that the reasons are not based on science or medicine, but on public relations. In our view, avoiding unnecessarily alarming the public is not without merit; however, it is one factor that must be weighed against the potential health risks to employees, their families and others,” it said.

NTEU is the largest independent federal union, representing 150,000 employees in 31 agencies and departments, including the entire 24,000-employee CBP workforce and thousands of TSA employees at airports across the country.