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Washington, D.C.—The National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) today turned the heat up in its efforts to block a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) plan to close more than half its laboratories when it asked members of Congress to probe the issue at a hearing tomorrow morning.

NTEU President Colleen M. Kelley made the request in a letter to Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), chairman of its Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee. The subcommittee has scheduled a hearing Tuesday morning on FDA efforts to assure the safety of the nation’s drug supply.

At issue is a proposal by FDA to restructure its Office of Regulatory Affairs (ORA), including the consolidation of its 13 laboratories around the country to between four and six such facilities.

“NTEU believes this proposal is seriously misguided and asks that it be halted,” President Kelley wrote to Reps. Dingell and Stupak, adding that NTEU believes such a plan “would compromise” efforts to protect the safety of the nation’s food supply and ensure that drugs and medical devices are not only safe, but effective and properly labeled as well.

The 13 laboratories are located in the Seattle area, San Francisco, the Los Angeles area, Denver, Kansas City, Jefferson, Arkansas; Philadelphia, New York City, Atlanta, San Juan, Detroit, the Boston area and the Cincinnati area.

The Kelley letter comes on the heels of a letter sent to the FDA last Friday from a bipartisan group of 25 House members, organized by Rep. Dennis Moore (D-Kan.) and Nancy Boyda (D-Kan.), calling for a halt on any such consolidation until Congress has conducted a thorough review of its impact. The House letter said the FDA labs are “of utmost importance” to the public. That letter, in turn, was sent less than two weeks after a bipartisan group of 20 members of the Senate wrote to the FDA seeking a halt to the plan.

President Kelley repeated her assertion that FDA has failed to make any case that larger, centralized labs are better suited to protect the public health. On the contrary, she said, “moving forward with the FDA plan could well prove to be counterproductive for the public, given the likely loss of skilled, experienced employees in the labs, many of whom would move to the private sector.”

At the same time, the NTEU leader was sharply critical of FDA’s failure to provide information to its own employees about its plans. FDA had planned—and then abruptly cancelled—employee meetings today on its proposal to restructure ORA.

“I find it particularly egregious that the agency would let corrosive rumors about closings and consolidations spread throughout the workplace,” she said. “Employees have the right to know the facts about things that impact their lives.”

Among the important unanswered questions employees are confronting, she said, are whether their particular lab will close; if so, on what timetable; whether they would be able to transfer elsewhere within FDA; whether buyouts or early retirements would be available; and much more.

NTEU is the largest independent federal union, representing some 150,000 employees in 30 agencies and departments, including some 5,200 in FDA. Of those, some 600 work in the labs.