Privatization of Federal Government Work

• The Bush Administration management agenda is to privatize up to one million federal jobs, either by handing them over to contractors either without any public-private cost comparison or competition, or by subjecting them to a highly biased new A-76 process that has been rewritten to favor contractors and put taxpayers and federal employees at an extreme disadvantage.

• The Administration's radical privatization agenda makes the government's "human capital crisis" worse by destroying the prospects for career development, stability, or fair treatment of federal employees and potential recruits. When "all" jobs are "presumed commercial" and thus subject to privatization, as OMB has ordered in the new A-76, an unmistakable message is sent that every federal position is temporary, that the chance to compete in defense of one's job will be rare, and that the federal government is not a place where hard work and loyalty will be rewarded.

• Taxpayers will be hurt by the Administration's privatization agenda because of the continued refusal to measure the size, individual cost, or content of the more than $120 billion worth of service contracts the government will sign this year. In addition, since the vast majority of service contracting (98% in the Department of Defense and almost 100% elsewhere) takes place without public-private competition, taxpayers are deprived of the financial benefits of that competition. Most government work that is privatized is just handed over directly to contractors without public private competition, including all new work, all ongoing contracted work, and most ongoing work performed by federal employees.

• The Bush Administration's privatization agenda is a crucial part of the overall agenda to dismantle the civil service and recreate a political "spoils system" based on patronage. By privatizing up to a million government jobs, and rewriting the rules of competition so that agencies can have the discretion to steer contracts to political allies and approve costly and unnecessary bells and whistles), the tradition of maintaining a professional civil service outside the realm of politics will be undermined. Politics will determine whose job is privatized, who gets the contract, and how much the contract will be worth.

• AFGE is fighting back against the Administration's privatization agenda by supporting the new version of the Truthfulness, Responsibility, and Accountability in Contracting (TRAC) Act, and TRAC-like amendments to authorization and appropriations bills; measures to free agencies from OMB's privatization quotas, and opposing the use of the entirely pro-contractor/anti-taxpayer rewrite of rules for outsourcing (a.k.a. OMB Circular A-76), and urging rejection of the anti-taxpayer Service Acquisition Reform Act (SARA).

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