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Washington, D.C.—An overreliance on private contractors, complicated by inadequate funding, staffing and training has combined to severely hamper the ability of the Federal Protective Service (FPS) to carry out its core mission of protecting federal facilities, the head of the nation’s largest independent union of federal employees told a key House committee today.

“Attacks on Internal Revenue Service offices in Austin, Texas, and shootings at a Las Vegas federal courthouse and at the Pentagon have once again raised concerns about the vulnerability of federal buildings and the safety and security of federal employees who work in them around the country,” said President Colleen M. Kelley in testimony submitted to the House Homeland Security Committee.

“These attacks, in which two federal employees were killed and several others seriously injured, serve as a grim reminder of the great risk that federal employees face each and every day in service to this country,” Kelley said. The committee is examining the potential impact on security at critical government facilities of federalizing contract guards.

FPS is responsible for the physical security of federal employees working in some 9,000 federally-owned and leased facilities nationwide; President Kelley said that while the FPS workforce has shrunk by nearly 15 percent, from 1,400 employees in fiscal 2004 to about 1,200 in fiscal 2009, the contractor guard force has tripled in that period—from 5,000 to 15,000.

“NTEU believes these drastic cuts to the FPS workforce and explosion in the number of contract security guards have led directly to shortfalls in contract and guard management and performance, and has seriously impeded the ability of FPS to ensure a safe environment in which federal agencies can conduct their business.” More than a million people are tenants of and visitors to federal buildings on any given day.

The NTEU leader said she believes Congress should carefully review FPS operations, and in particular its overreliance on contractors, with an eye toward determining if it is appropriate to consider in-sourcing some of the contact guard positions, and especially those at high-risk facilities.

“Replacing contract guards who lack law enforcement authority at those facilities with federal police officers who possess the full authority to perform traditional police functions, and restricting contract guards to solely providing monitoring functions at lower risk facilities will ensure FPS is better able to protect federal facilities and the employees within them,” she said. At the same time, the NTEU leader stressed the importance of making any change impacting FPS contract guards properly by bringing them into the civil service

As the largest independent federal union, NTEU represents 150,000 employees in 31 agencies and departments.