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Washington, D.C.—The leader of the nation’s largest independent union of federal employees today reaffirmed the long-standing commitment of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) to a federal workplace free of discrimination and management retaliation, and urged Congress to take steps to ensure it.

In testimony submitted to the House Judiciary Committee in support of the intent of H.R. 169, the Notification and Federal Employee Nondiscrimination Act, NTEU President Colleen M. Kelley called the legislation “potentially an important step” in addressing what she described as “this elusive goal.”

She lauded the important whistleblower protections of H.R. 169 “for those with the courage to stand up and expose wrongful actions,” but noted some concerns about the proposal, including its lack of “firewall protections” to ensure that employees do not wind up “paying the price for management misdeeds.”

The NTEU leader urged Congress to continue the payment of judgments against the government from the Justice Department Judgment Fund, rather than making any such monies come from agency budgets. Federal agencies “do not have the option of raising prices or cutting dividends,” as do private sector employers, to pay judgments, Kelley said.

“We are concerned that payments made by agencies could result in reductions-in-force or loss of awards, child care benefits, training, transportation assistance or other benefits,” she said.

She also encouraged the committee “to consider other tools” to fight workplace discrimination, including giving such third parties as the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Office of Special Counsel “clear authority to impose discipline, including suspension and demotion” on managers found to have engaged in wrongful actions.

The NTEU leader noted, as well, that discrimination “is no more acceptable” by taxpayer-funded private contractors than by the federal government itself.

She urged the committee “to restore the protections from workplace discrimination” that were eliminated when the Bush administration earlier this year overturned regulations designed to ensure that a company’s record of complying with the law, including employment non-discrimination laws, be considered before being awarded a federal contract.

“The administration’s actions run contrary to the principle that tax dollars should go to responsive, law-abiding companies, not to corporations that are chronic civil rights law breakers,” she said.

Kelley emphasized that NTEU has long been among the leaders in the fight to eliminate discrimination both in the workplace and outside of it. She reminded the Judiciary Committee of the words of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. that there is “no intrinsic difference” in the drive for equal opportunity in the workplace and in the broader society.

NTEU, Kelley said, has always agreed with Dr. King’s characterization that the labor movement and the civil rights movement are “the two most dynamic and cohesive forces in the country” pressing for equal opportunity.