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Washington, D.C.—The National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) today applauded approval by the House Appropriations Committee of language calling for civilian-military pay parity in 2004 as well as an amendment requiring the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to report on how federal agencies are paying for OMB’s unfunded mandate that they conduct contracting out studies.

NTEU President Colleen M. Kelley said the committee’s actions in marking up the Transportation/Treasury Appropriations Act for fiscal 2004 “comes as welcome news to federal employees,” and she urged approval of both the pay parity and OMB reporting requirement by Congress.

The administration has proposed only a two percent pay raise for federal civilian employees in 2004, while proposing an average 4.1 percent raise for members of the military.

“Higher civilian pay is one of the key steps government can—and must—take to make it competitive in attracting and retaining in public service the most qualified and dedicated employees,” President Kelley said. She called “disappointing, but not surprising” this administration’s continuing failure to accept that concept.

On the contracting out issue, the NTEU leader praised the efforts of Rep. James Moran (D-VA) in seeking to ensure greater accountability from OMB, which is spearheading the administration’s contracting out drive. NTEU has been the leader in the fight against efforts to contract to the private sector as many as 850,000 federal jobs.

The Moran amendment requires OMB to report to the committee on how agencies are paying for their competitive sourcing programs, since that information is not included in the administration’s budget.

“Agencies already are struggling under tight budget constraints in order to carry out their missions,” President Kelley said, “and this unfunded contracting out mandate is forcing them to do even more with less.”

Separately, the NTEU leader criticized the administration’s privatization efforts as pursuing a course that ultimately will result in government services being delivered by unaccountable private contractors at higher costs and lower value to the taxpayers.

She advanced the union’s criticisms of contracting out in testimony submitted to the National Parks Subcommittee of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and to the Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on Oversight of Government, the Federal Workforce and the District of Columbia.

President Kelley said she had welcomed the administration’s efforts to revise the rules covering government contracting efforts “as an excellent opportunity to improve the delivery of services to the taxpayers through fair competition” on a truly level playing field for those competing.

“To my dismay,” however, she said, the new rules do “nothing to advance the principles of increasing taxpayer value and leveling the playing field. Not only would federal employees suffer as a result of the revisions, but taxpayers would as well.”

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