Home Media Center News Releases

Washington, D.C.—Joining the calls of key senators and other federal union leaders, the head of the nation’s largest independent union of federal workers today urged support for Senate legislation that would protect the civil service and collective bargaining rights of federal employees who would make up the new Department of Homeland Security.

National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) President Colleen M. Kelley said the broad-based show of support at a Capitol Hill rally and press conference is “an important step” in the fight to preserve the rights of tens of thousands of federal employees.

Their rights have been put at risk in homeland security legislation put forward by the Bush Administration and passed earlier this summer by the House of Representatives. NTEU represents some 12,000 Customs Service employees who would be part of the new department.

The morning press conference in the Dirksen Senate Office Building in support of S. 2452—legislation advanced by Sen. Joseph Leiberman (D-CT), chairman of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee—featured Senators Lieberman and Ted Kennedy (D-MA), chairman of the Senate Labor Committee.

The Lieberman bill would continue civil service protections for homeland security employees, including the right to join unions and bargain collectively.

Despite the president’s threat to veto homeland security legislation that fails to contain sufficient management “flexibility,” President Kelley repeated her assertion that any legislation that strips rights from federal employees “weakens, rather than strengthens the security of our nation.”

She said NTEU remains “adamantly opposed” to giving the director of homeland security and the head of the federal Office of Personnel Management (OPM) “a blank slate upon which to design an entirely new federal personnel system.” President Kelley called that “extremely bad public policy.”

As the largest independent federal union, NTEU represents some 150,000 employees in 26 agencies and departments.