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Washington, D.C.—Despite the House vote to use private contractors to screen airline passengers and baggage, President Colleen M. Kelley of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) said today she still believes the public interest “will be best served” by a final congressional bill reflecting the strong bipartisan support in the Senate for using federal employees to perform this critical public safety function.

The Senate version of the airline security bill, which was approved on a 100 to zero vote, contains a provision to make airport security screeners federal employees. A Democratic proposal to include such a provision in the House bill was defeated, 218-214. The House bill to put the function in private hands, a position advanced by Republicans and supported by the administration, was then approved by a larger margin.

The NTEU leader said the House vote was “engineered by the House leadership,” and said the views “expressed by every member of the Senate, both Democrats and Republicans, more accurately reflects the sentiment in the country and the need to professionalize this work.”

Kelley said there is “ample evidence” that giving the work to private contractors, seeking to win it on the basis of the lowest bid, “is much more of a risk than our nation can afford to take.”

While this battle is about the safety of Americans while they travel, the NTEU president said, the broader issue concerns the administration’s view, supported by some in Congress, that contracting out more and more government work, rather than having federal employees perform it, is good for the country.

“Not only is there no real evidence to support that,” Kelley said, “there is ample evidence to the contrary.” The track record of federal contractors in meeting their obligations to agencies and taxpayers is spotty, at best, she said, adding that the government itself has been lax in its oversight of federal contractors and in holding contractors accountable for their performance.

The NTEU president noted that the administration has indicated it would accept a “reasonable solution” to this issue, and said that “the Senate vote to federalize these positions reflects not only the most reasonable solution, but the one that offers the most security and safety for American travelers.”

As the nation’s largest independent union of federal employees, NTEU represents some 150,000 workers in 25 agencies and departments.