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Washington, D.C.—Even as Sen. Paul Sarbanes (D-MD) warned that federal employees and supportive legislators have “a tough road ahead of us,” he encouraged members of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) to keep pressing ahead on key issues because the union has “a lot of strong supporters on (Capitol) Hill” on workplace issues of importance to the federal workforce.

Sen. Sarbanes, who is serving his fifth term in the Senate and who has long supported federal workers, spoke at yesterday’s closing luncheon of NTEU’s annual Legislative Conference. He reiterated his strong support for the work of federal employees and of the union’s fight on key issues in the 109th Congress, including federal pay and benefits, collective bargaining rights and contracting of federal jobs.

Sarbanes was introduced to the luncheon crowd of NTEU chapter leaders and activists from around the country by NTEU President Colleen M. Kelley. She called him a valued “strategist, mentor, advisor and true friend” of federal workers.

The drive for civilian-military pay parity in 2006 is a fight in which Sen. Sarbanes has taken a leading role by introducing a pay parity resolution in the Senate in the wake of the administration’s proposal for a smaller pay raise for federal civilian workers than for members of the military.

He called on the NTEU members “to renew and redouble” their legislative efforts in the face of an administration he described as “openly hostile to its own people” and “trying to break your morale” by such steps as the recent issuance of new personnel regulations for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

The administration’s efforts to “beat up and berate” federal employees as a way to reduce the quality of government service and thus advance its drive to contract federal jobs to the private sector have thus far foundered, he said, in the face of the good work federal employees continue to do for the public. “Thank you for not allowing them to beat you down,” he said.

The Maryland Democrat expressed his concern about administration efforts “to politicize the federal workforce,” pointing in particular to its efforts to get employees of the Social Security Administration to advance the administration’s point of view about privatizing that system.

“We need to protect integrity in political decision-making,” he said. “The career federal workforce has always understood that its mission is outside politics.”

In his well-received remarks, he urged the NTEU members to help “bring the county back to fundamental principles,” and in particular, with respect to the Social Security debate, help spread understand of the importance of the “sharing of generational responsibilities.”

NTEU is the largest independent federal union, representing some 150,000 employees in 30 agencies and departments.