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Washington, D.C.—While the issuance of qualification standards for airport security personnel by the Department of Transportation (DOT) is a step forward, the much broader and more important question of extending to these employees the rights and protections of the nation’s civil service laws remains to be addressed, the leader of the nation’s largest independent union of federal workers said today.

President Colleen M. Kelley of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) was commenting on a statement today by Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta outlining qualification standards for airport security workers, including U.S. citizenship, a high school diploma, passing a standardized examination and other steps.

“That’s an acceptable start to improved airport and airline security, as far as it goes,” Kelley said. “But the real test will be when the newly-named Undersecretary of Transportation determines whether these employees will have the benefits and protections of Title 5 of the U.S. Code. Unless they do, they will be federal employees in name only.”

President Bush has said he intends to nominate as Treasury Undersecretary John Magaw, former director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF), an agency where NTEU is the collective bargaining representative.

President Kelley noted, as she did when Congress approved legislation purporting to federalize airport security screeners, that part of the problem has been recruiting and retaining quality employees. Turnover rates

among these workers at the nation’s 19 largest airports averaged 126 percent in the year ending April 30, 1999, she said.

“Uncertainty about the nature and degree of your rights and working conditions is a principal factor in this kind of turnover, and coverage under Title 5 would go a long way toward easing those uncertainties,” the union president said.

Just last week, a bipartisan group of House members called on Secretary Mineta to provide full federal employee status and benefits to airport security workers. The recently enacted Aviation and Transportation Security Act gives the politically appointed undersecretary full discretion on pay, benefits and bargaining rights for the new hires.

In their letter, Reps. Tom Davis (R-VA), Steny Hoyer (D-MD), Connie Morella (R-MD), Albert Wynn (D-MD), Frank Wolf (R-VA), James Moran (D-VA) and Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) said “the professionalism and commitment” of other federal security personnel, including the Customs Service, “occurs because of the existing civil service framework, not in spite of it.”

As the largest independent federal union, NTEU represents 150,000 employees in 25 agencies and departments.