Legislative — 6

Paycheck Deception; Silencing the American Family
While campaign finance reform has become a hotly debated issue on Capitol Hill and in the State Capitols across the nation over the last decade, the debate gave way to new and more vicious attacks by the right wing and their evil corporate imps against workers and their families. Those attacks began with the introduction of paycheck deception otherwise know as the Paycheck Protection Act.

Despite setbacks in the past like Beck vs. CWA and legislation passed in some states, we had been able to hold the right wing at bay. Because of labor’s election efforts the right wing felt compelled to retaliate against workers and their families and attempt to silence us.

While labor has been successful in defeating attempts to silence us at the federal level, each year we must push back state legislature attempts to push this anti-worker legislation. The new millennium promises to bring a new round of attacks on workers and their families while the right wing tries to keep labor out of the 2004 election cycle, maintain a majority in Congress and win back the White House.

Federal Procurement Reform
In July 1999, the Clinton administration issued new regulations to make much needed changes to the procurement guidelines for the federal government. The two most important changes to the guidelines would:

• Require government contractors to have satisfactory labor and employment practices, so that contracts are not awarded to companies that violate our labor laws; and
• Stop government reimbursement of any expenses incurred by employers in fighting union organizing campaigns or defending against unfair labor practice complaints.

Privatization
After Republicans won control of Congress with the so called Gingrich revolution in 1994, the Cato Institute, an ultraconservative think tank with strong ties to the Bush administration, urged Congress to privatize federal services, air traffic control system, all federal energy enterprises, Amtrak, the U.S. Postal Service and a host of other federal services and jobs.

Almost 10 years later, Bush has targeted some 850,000 federal jobs for privatization with or without public-private competition. At the same time the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is rewriting Circular A-76 in a manner that would further tilt the process in favor of private contractors. Many problems have been identified with the privatization process

Including;

• There is no system of accurate accounting for the cost of contractors
• Public-private competition is seriously lacking
• Privatization has placed no emphasis on accountability for the taxpayer
• Large-scale privatization deepens the human capital crisis
• Privatization can have adverse implications for the economy
• Privatization undercuts workers wages and benefits

The move to privatize more functions is not just a goal of the federal government, but also that of state and local governments across the country. Like the outsourcing in the private sector, privatizing of the public sector promises to save taxpayers money and provide a quality product. However, privatization schemes continually fall short of their objectives which leave public service employees without jobs and contractors holding governmental agencies hostage for the services with cost overruns and passing on increased costs to taxpayers.