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Washington, D.C.—National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) President Colleen M. Kelley has applauded the Senate Treasury Postal Appropriations Subcommittee for voting in opposition to the administration’s use of arbitrary quotas to make contracting decisions.

She also welcomed yesterday’s vote by the subcommittee in support of a 4.1 percent 2003 pay raise for federal civilian employees. The vote on the pay raise mirrored approval by the House Appropriations Committee earlier this week of a proposal by Reps. Steny Hoyer (D-MD) and Frank Wolf (R-VA) calling for a civilian pay raise higher than the 2.6 percent contained in the administration’s 2003 budget proposal. The full House is scheduled to vote on the measure next week.

On the contracting out issue, the subcommittee approved an amendment to the fiscal year 2003 Treasury appropriations bill offered by Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND) that would block the use of outsourcing quotas.

“The outsourcing quotas are having a significant impact on the operations of federal agencies,” President Kelley said, “as the quotas do not allow for any consideration to be given to the unique situations of agencies.”

In line with the administration’s push to ultimately make available to the private sector some 425,000 federal jobs, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has imposed on all departments and agencies quotas to open up to the private sector by the end of the next fiscal year 15 percent of the federal employee jobs on their FAIR Act inventories. FAIR Act lists contain jobs said to be commercial in nature.

President Kelley has been especially critical of the OMB directive. “The OMB quotas allow agencies to contract out the work without first holding a public-private competition to determine what is in the best interests of the taxpayers,” she said.

The NTEU leader added: “Because most civilian agencies have virtually no experience in conducting a fair public-private competition, in order to meet the OMB quotas, they have no choice but to contract out the federal employee jobs without competition.”

The Dorgan amendment, President Kelley said, offers “a much more intelligent approach” to getting the best value for taxpayers. It would prohibit OMB or any other federal agency from using numerical quotas, targets or goals for opening up federal employee jobs to private contractors.

Instead, it would permit agencies to continue as now, contracting out as much or as little government work as necessary to accomplish their missions effectively, she said, noting in particular that such an approach would help base sourcing decisions on the unique requirements of each agency.

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