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Washington, D.C.—More than 350 NTEU local union leaders and activists from around the country gathered in Washington, D.C., for the opening session of the union’s annual legislative conference today. Attendees at the morning session heard from Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.), ranking member of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.), chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, and NTEU National President Colleen M. Kelley.

In her address to attendees, President Kelley spoke of a number of issues affecting NTEU members and all federal employees, including the important issue of who should be performing the work of the American public—unaccountable private sector contractors or the dedicated members of the federal workforce who are committed to public service.

The answer is clear, Kelley said, “given the tools and the resources to do the work, there is no one who can do the work of the federal government better than federal employees.”

However, the administration feels differently. Under proposed revisions to federal contracting law, she told conference participants prior to their Capitol Hill visits to their senators and representatives, all federal jobs—1.8 million of them—would be characterized as commercial in nature, and thus subject to privatization, unless an agency can justify in writing that the jobs are inherently governmental.

Meanwhile, “the lack of oversight and accountability of the federal contractor workforce continues to grow,” she said, “while the administration supports more work to the contractors, but no more accountability or oversight.”

Lieberman and Davis both echoed some of Kelley’s concerns regarding wholesale contracting out of government work and questioned various administration proposals on the topic.

Under the administration’s quota-driven contracting out initiative, agencies already are under a directive from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to make available to the private sector by

the end of the next fiscal year 15 percent of their jobs classified as commercial in nature.

But it is going even farther with proposed changes in OMB Circular A-76, the document that sets out federal contracting rules, which make it clear that the real objective is to privatize, with or without competition, up to 850,000 federal jobs, and ultimately a majority of the federal workforce.

The NTEU leader also urged conference delegates to raise with their elected officials the pressing need for closing the gap between private and public sector pay, as well as the importance of making health care more affordable for federal employees.

President Kelley said NTEU is “available and ready to work” with Congress and the administration “to craft the right solutions for the country, for federal employees and for taxpayers.”

Conference participants further will take up with their senators and representatives several issues affecting employees in the new Department of Homeland Security (DHS), including some 12,000 former Customs Service employees represented by NTEU.

These include preserving employee collective bargaining and civil service rights, increasing DHS funding—the administration has proposed only a one percent increase in homeland security funding for 2004—and reauthorization of a program of user fees to fund Customs overtime payments and some 1,200 Customs positions across the nation. That program is set to expire on Sept. 30.

The conference, at the Holiday Inn Capitol, 550 C St. SW, will continue tonight with the annual Customs candlelight vigil at the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial honoring Customs officers killed in the line of duty. The conference will include a Wednesday lunchtime congressional panel discussion of federal issues and a Thursday luncheon with remarks by Sen. Jon Corzine (D-NJ).

NTEU is the largest independent federal union, representing some 150,000 federal employees in 29 agencies and departments.