Federal Daily - July 22, 2009

OMB Must Establish New Privatization Guidance, NTEU Says

As the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) reviews rules that govern the A-76 privatization process, the agency needs to clarify what kinds of federal jobs private contractors are eligible for—as well as what constitutes “inherently governmental” work that must be reserved for civil servants, National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) President Colleen Kelley said this week. At the center of the NTEU complaint is the 2003 rewrite of OMB contracting rules, which effectively expanded and skewed the definition of inherently governmental work to favor private contractors, Kelley said. NTEU is asking OMB to repudiate the presumption in its 2003 revisions that a government function is commercial in nature unless affirmatively shown otherwise. That is wrong-headed, Kelley said. Instead, the work of the public should be viewed as inherently governmental unless shown to be commercial. After the previous administration rewrote A-76 rules to favor contractors, federal contracting exploded—climbing from $207 billion in 2000 to $400 billion in 2008. The Department of Homeland Security, for example, now uses contractors to prepare budgets, develop policy, support acquisition, develop and interpret regulations, reorganize and plan, and administer Circular A-76 efforts, Kelley said. “Overall, runaway privatization has wasted millions of taxpayer dollars—with federal employees repeatedly expected to pick up the pieces and complete the work contractors fail to perform adequately,” Kelley said. To see more, go to: www.nteu.org/PressKits/PressRelease/PressRelease.aspx?ID=1463.

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Union Urges More BOP Staffing, Better Equipment to Protect Guards

The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) urged lawmakers to increase the Fiscal Year 2010 budget for Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) so the agency can add staffing and provide better equipment to protect correctional officers from inmate assault. Speaking at a July 21 House Judiciary subcommittee hearing, AFGE Council of Prison Locals Legislative Coordinator Phil Glover made the plea while testifying on unsafe conditions at BOP facilities. BOP operates 115 institutions, which hold about 200,000 federal offenders and are staffed by roughly 36,000 employees. In addition to his AFGE position, Glover serves as a correctional officer at a federal facility in Pennsylvania. Glover asked that lawmakers fully staff BOP institutions, where the inmate-to-staff ratio can be as high as 150-1. The union also wants BOP to issue stab-resistant vests to correctional officers because assaults on officers with homemade weapons have spiked in recent years. Congress also needs to set aside funding to fully support the Federal Prison Industries (FPI) program, which offers jobs to well-behaving inmates inside the prison walls, the union said. Recently, FPI announced that budgetary concerns were forcing it to eliminate factories at 14 facilities and to downsize operations at four additional locations. To see more, go to: www.afge.org.

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Unions Slam Performance Pay, OPM Chief Applauds Feds

The presidents of the two largest federal employee labor unions this week spoke out against the growth of what both chiefs insisted remain badly flawed pay-for performance personnel systems—as well against the outsourcing of work that a decade ago was considered the responsibility of federal employees. American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) President John Gage and National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) President Colleen Kelley discussed these and other contentious labor issues on a panel at the Excellence In Government conference held this week at the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington. At the close of the conference, Office of Personnel Management (OPM) Director John Berry delivered his own defense of federal employees. “[D]espite the work they’re doing, perceptions of federal workers changed for the worse as it became fashionable for politicians of both parties to run against Washington and the boogey man of  ‘the bureaucracy,’” Berry said. “For over 30 years, federal workers and the work we do have been denigrated and disparaged … It’s time the denigration ends.” For more, go to www.excelgov.com.

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