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Washington, D.C.—Today’s bipartisan approval by the full House of Representatives of an amendment prohibiting the use of numeric quotas to contract out the jobs of federal workers sends a clear signal to the administration to stop efforts to arbitrarily open up 425,000 federal jobs to the private sector, the head of the nation’s largest independent federal union said today.

In applauding the House vote, President Colleen M. Kelley of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU), who has been leading the fight against the administration’s contracting out quotas, called it “a major victory for America’s taxpayers, and a major victory for common sense.”

The bipartisan amendment to the fiscal 2003 Treasury Postal Appropriations Bill was authored by Reps. James Moran (D-VA), Frank Wolf (R-VA) and Connie Morella (R-MD). It was approved by a vote of 261 to 166.

Under it, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) would be blocked from continuing to enforce arbitrary quotas on every federal agency to open up to the private sector by the end of fiscal 2003 fully 15 percent of the jobs considered commercial in nature—with a goal of opening up a total of 425,000 federal jobs to private contractors.

The OMB quotas would have allowed agencies to contract out the work without first holding a public-private competition to determine what is in the best interests of taxpayers, the NTEU leader said. She added that

because most civilian agencies have virtually no experience in conducting a fair public-private competition, in order to meet the OMB quotas, the result would have been to contract out the jobs of federal employees without competition.

“The administration sought to move ahead on its campaign promises to increase contracting, but without consulting Congress,” President Kelley said. “Now, however, Congress has spoken, and spoken wisely for the taxpayers.”

The NTEU president added that “the House vote recognizes that decisions about how best to deliver government services at the lowest cost should be driven by unique agency mission requirements, not by arbitrary numerical privatization goals.” The amendment gives federal agencies the flexibility to contract out as much or as little as is necessary to meet their mission requirements, she noted.

As the largest independent federal union, NTEU represents some 150,000 employees in 25 agencies and departments.