Federal employee union to propose insourcing legislation
AFGE is confident that with a new administration and Congress, the tide has turned against efforts to contract out federal work.
The American Federation of Government Employees soon will propose legislation that would reverse the use of public-private job competitions and focus on bringing inherently governmental and mission-essential work back in-house.
The proposal, which sources said is likely to be introduced this week, will build on provisions already in effect for the Defense Department and pending for other agencies to promote the use of federal employees to perform certain tasks. This would represent an about-face from the Bush administration's push to let contractors bid on more federal jobs.
An AFGE source said the union proposal would expand on Section 735 of the fiscal 2009 financial services appropriations bill, which would have required agency heads to devise and implement procedures ensuring that federal employees are considered for new tasks and jobs that currently are handled by contractors but could be insourced.
The appropriations bill provision also stated that federal employees should be given special consideration for work that is inherently governmental, or is closely associated with an inherently governmental function; has been performed poorly by a contractor; or was given to a contractor as the result of a flawed public-private job competition under the rules in Office of Management and Budget Circular A-76.
The challenge for 2009 is not only to stop outsourcing, but to "aggressively go after areas of work that have been contracted out but belong back in house," said AFGE President John Gage, on Monday during the union's annual legislative conference.
"That means imposing an A-76 moratorium until reforms are enacted . . . eliminating direct conversions without full and fair competition . . . mandating that inherently governmental functions will be performed by government employees . . . and requiring agencies to give federal employees every opportunity to insource both new and outsourced work," Gage said. "In these fights, we can expect to have the Obama administration on our side, because our reforms advance the causes of transparency, accountability and good government that the president so eloquently champions."
A number of lawmakers also expressed their commitment to freezing outsourcing during the AFGE conference Monday.
"We need a spirit of 76, the American Revolution, to turn this country around; not A-76," said Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md.
Larry Allen, president of the Coalition for Government Procurement, a contractor association, said he is not surprised unions are optimistic about advancing their agenda under the new Congress and administration.
"The climate for this sort of thing is definitely more favorable than last year," Allen said. "So far organized labor is riding a tide of early and good successes from this administration. I don't think a week has gone by without a pro-labor message from the White House."
But the reality is government cannot function and meet taxpayer needs without a contractor workforce, he said.
"A better use of everyone's time would be to figure out how to better manage that contractor workforce rather than recreate the era of big government, which has implications not just for those of us working now but for people working for the next couple generations," Allen said.
A key concern, Allen said, is that a sweeping insourcing provision would be attached to a piece of "must-have" legislation such as an appropriations bill, without a full discussion on the merits of competitive sourcing.
"This is not something we've taken a leading [role] on, but if there's a provision introduced, then we'll take a look at it and act as is appropriate," he said. "I'm sure industry will weigh in appropriately when we need to."
Robert Brodsky and Alyssa Rosenberg contributed to this report.