Government Employees — 3

Contracting and A-76

While rescinding those Executive Orders set the tone of how the Bush Administration would deal with labor, the privatization of government services emerged as a high priority. Portrayed as a cost savings measure for taxpayers, privatization proved to be a boon to the corporate supporters of the Bush campaign. The goal of the administration was to create competition for more than 850,000 federal positions by 2005. Threshold levels had been set for agencies to meet in succeeding years of the administration. To make matters worse, in 2002 the Office of Management and Budget proposed changes to OMB Circular A-76. Under the newly revised Office of Management and Budget Circular

A-76, contractors would gain a clear advantage in competitions over federal agencies.

Federal employees had become very proficient in the A-76 process and were beginning to win more and more competitions over contractors. Under the old circular, agencies had up to 48 months to gather information and put together a proposal for consideration. Under the new revisions, the time was reduced to 12 months with strict compliance guidelines for agencies giving contractors a clear advantage for the competition. Moreover, under the old circular, contractors would have to show a substantial cost savings to the taxpayer in order to be awarded the bid. The revisions unveiled a new procurement method called “best value” and allowed noncost factors such as technical performance and reputation to be considered. The one step process pits federal employees against the contractors in a winner take all process where federal employees could be eliminated before the end of the competition and even before other contractors were eliminated.

While the new procurement measures presented many challenges to the Federal Sector of the IAM, strong grassroots efforts by the membership stopped huge attempts to privatize services in the Forest Service and the Department of Defense. Though the Forest Service Council did not get Congress to limit the Administration’s ability to outsource, they were successful in putting a cap on what the agency could spend on their outsourcing program. More importantly, they also convinced Congress to re-establish a provision removed by the new A-76 rules where the agency must predict a cost savings of 10 percent or more before work can be outsourced.