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Return to Article: Researchers say few jobs are lost to competitive sourcing

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  Now suppose that a university has a choice to (a) raise the cost of tuition or (b) control costs. What is a university to do? Suppose also that the university is,in fact, concerned about the quality of the education it provides. What incentives should it offer its staff.: higher than prevailing comparable salaries, early and extended tenure, assurances against separation with little hope of professional advancement? Now, what if the university established for the very first time, measurable performance standards comparable to those used at other universities and applied them to both the old tenured professors as well and the young ones. Would an early out offer be so awful? Would an offer of retained pay and save pay, without having those costs included in the performance metric be so awful? Would a full severence benefit in a portable pension system reflect a terrible employer, particularly when those costs are not included in the performance decision? But then again, why should any university be held accountable for cost or quality. These are not facts of life in the larger economy are they? Your kids can afford it. Stop the madness and simply raise the tuition.

  GovExec.com reader Posted November 8, 2004 8:31 AM
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  Suppose a university had a "rightsizing" action. Suppose in the restructuring, the university gave 30% of its professors the choice of (1) retiring early with a reduced pension (if they met certain age and tenure requirements), (2) being demoted to teaching assistant with reduced pay and no guarantee that they'd ever become professors again, (3) finding another place to teach, or (4) being let go.

  What if all of the professors chose option 1, 2 or 3? Would that mean none of them lost their jobs?

  GovExec.com reader Posted November 2, 2004 2:09 AM
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  New Orleans - I agree. Early out is not always desirable. It depends on a lot of things. For those of us not ROD (Retired on Duty) we aren't looking for an early out. I've always been proud of the work I do, my agency, and myself for the effort I always give. I don't want to be rewarded with "here's your hat - we can replace you with someone less experienced." Loyalty works both ways. If you want to get rid of dead wood, do it; don't punish the hard working career federal employee! Oh yes and VOTE ON TUESDAY!

  GovExec.com reader Posted October 29, 2004 9:20 AM
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  This report is incredibly far off base - it is obvious the university researchers have never suffered through an outsourcing themselves. Our A76 competition and many of our sister installations were losers in anyone's eyes. The report states that only 5% lost their jobs, but cover that by stating that they either retired or found other gov't jobs. I would say that being forced out of your job/position constitutes losing your job, whether you end up working for McDonald's or the FBI, you still lost your job to A76. And those gov't positions are lost forever. The 5% quip is very misleading. Secondly, it states there were savings and/or increases in performance with outsourcing. I know for a fact that 100% of A76 contracts on at least 10 different installations that I know details of, cost the taxpayers more money annually, and/or suffered a huge decrease in performance. The Auditing arm (GAO) of Congress is looking at this very issue. This report is so far removed from reality it can be classified as science fiction....

  GovExec.com reader Posted October 28, 2004 1:55 PM
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  I have heard this argument so many times before. Post A-76 agencies are typically downsized between 30-40%. However, miraculously, according to proponents of A-76 nobody EVER actually loses their job. Huh? I realize that I never was any good at math, but to me it seems like the numbers don't come out quite right.

  Also, the A-76 buffs like to say that government workers who are RIFed and/or have their jobs outsourced tend to simply get another government job. That's all well & good, but I have 2 questions. First, how much do their "new" jobs pay in comparison with their "old" jobs? I've known numerous people who had to take GS level & step downgrades to get a job elsewhere in the government. And yet, we're supposed to believe that everything always turns out terrific for displaced government workers?

  Secondly, many times government workers have their jobs outsourced and get a different government job ONLY to have to start all over again & go through the whole A-76 nightmare AGAIN!! And the bigwigs in D.C. are always found scratching their heads as to why morale in government service is lower than a worm's belly....

  David Posted October 28, 2004 12:07 PM
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  Mr. Soloway is incorrect. Employees displaced by outsourcing have been told that there is NO "priority placement" for other federal jobs, because this is technically not a "RIF".

  GovExec.com reader Posted October 28, 2004 11:46 AM
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  3057 (that would be 5% of 61151) people out of a job. 3057 families with lost income. 3057 families without health benefits. 3057 dedicated employees out on the street. And the federal deficit continues to rise. The numbers don't add up folks. They never have. To say nothing of the morale issues. Where does Gansler propose agencies get money for these "soft landing" programs? We just went thru an A-76 which was supposed to save us $1.8 million per year. Now we are being told to pony up an additional $300,000 per year to pay for the MEO.

  It must be nice to sit around in a political think tank all day producing excuses for your corporate cronies to continue to rip off the American taxpayers. Jaques, you need to get out in the real world and see all the good work being done by public servants. The price tag you try to put on it does not fit the bill.

  Mike H. Posted October 27, 2004 8:34 PM
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  This "research" is faulty. They assume that taking early retirement is not the same as losing your job. While on the surface, that is true, most people still consider being forced into early retirement as losing your job. Either way, you still have to find another job. Secondly, transferring to another job, when being forced with a lay-off, is still losing your job. I'd wager that they also did not include people who found jobs outside of government prior to being laid off. The way I read the report, what they are really saying is that 5% of the employees were totally unemployed after the outsourcing.

  It is also interesting that they only included DoD outsourcing...

  GovExec.com reader Posted October 27, 2004 12:45 PM
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  Mr. Carelli, YOU ARE SO RIGHT!!!! It's a LOSE - LOSE situation for the career Federal employees. The contract workers recently got a raise, while Federal employees are facing job losses, demotions, and forced early outs!! NO SCARE TACTICS HERE...JUST PURE FACTS! I think it's high time the Federal government does what's RIGHT instead of what's EASIEST!

  A-76'd in the Heartland Posted October 27, 2004 9:27 AM
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  >>"The report included Defense Department data showing the percentage of competitions won by federal employees has risen steadily during the past few years -- a fact private contractors have cited in arguing that competitions are biased against them." Couldn't it just be that the earlier competitions picked off the low-hanging fruit?

  GovExec.com reader Posted October 27, 2004 9:08 AM
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  Tell this adulterated bull hockey to those of us who have lost our jobs, maybe you can convince us.....NOT! If lessor qualifications, less experience, less loyalty, less service, unqualified personnel doing government service is what you want for your tax dollars continue to out source. Enough said.

  Budget Analyst Posted October 27, 2004 8:04 AM
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  GOVExec should take a closer look at the numbers. Yes, 5% of all workers were involuntarily separated (RIF'ed) through competitions (Note, this doesn't even count Direct Conversions. 5,239 federal workers lost their jobs through Direct Conversion, without any chance of competition (see p. 22 of the report). Guess GOVEXEC doesn't think that's newsworthy).

  Any federal worker knows that an agency does everything possible to avoid RIF's. Consider the implications of pushing 7,266 federal workers into early retirement, or forcing 10,974 other workers to take other jobs. Is the impact on workers still so minimal?

  Frank Posted October 26, 2004 7:27 PM