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Washington, D.C. — Agreeing there is need for improved airport security, the leader of the nation’s largest independent union of federal workers said today that the stakes are too high to allow this critical work to be contracted out.
Following the Administration’s announced plan of continuing the use of contract workers for airport security, President Colleen M. Kelley of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) said, “we cannot rely on the government’s track record of ensuring accountability for the work of private contractors. The American people expect, deserve and demand better.”
NTEU, which as the nation’s largest independent union of federal workers represents some 150,000 employees in 25 agencies and departments, including some 7,500 Customs Service inspectors and canine enforcement officers, has long argued that taxpayers have been ill served by a lack of meaningful oversight of private contractors performing government functions. Moreover, Kelley has pointed repeatedly to a lack of evidence that contracting either saves taxpayers’ money or provides quality work.
She pointed to an instance earlier this summer in which a major banking institution, working under a government contract, lost or destroyed some 40,000 tax documents, including payments. “That upset everyone who cares about quality work,” Kelley said, “and when you look at that performance in the context of airport security, you can see the stakes are so much higher.”
From the beginning of its term in office, the administration has been pushing to privatize an increasing amount of work that traditionally has been performed by federal employees. Kelley is one of a dozen members
of the Commercial Activities Panel (CAP), a public-private body chaired by Comptroller General David Walker, that is examining contracting processes and issues in the federal government.
“Federal employees have proven, time and again,” she said, “that given the tools, training and opportunity, they will perform their tasks in a thoroughly professional, effective and efficient manner. With something so important as security, given the events of September 11,” she added, “the American people deserve to have a high degree of confidence in the manner in which the work is being accomplished.”