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Washington, D.C.—In a wide-ranging and blunt assessment of government efforts to deal with its human capital crisis, the leader of the nation’s largest independent union of federal workers today attacked as a major impediment the administration’s “blind targets” for contracting out federal jobs.

“Would you seriously consider employment with the federal government knowing your job may be contracted out from under you for no reason other than to meet an arbitrary number?” President Colleen M. Kelley of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) asked the Senate Government Affairs Committee.

This administration, Kelley said, “has set arbitrary privatization quotas for every federal agency, directing them to open up to the private sector 15 percent of their jobs considered to be commercial in nature by the end of fiscal 2003,”—with larger numbers of jobs to be opened to the private sector in coming years.

“The need to hire and maintain a highly trained and skilled federal workforce has never been more clear,” the union leader said. “Federal agencies are in a contest with state and local governments and private sector employers for the best workers—a battle we continue to lose.” The privatization quota proposal “flies in the face” of efforts to address this critical problem.

“NTEU believes Congress needs to let the administration know in no uncertain terms that these quotas are counterproductive and will not stand,” President Kelley said.

But contracting out wasn’t the only issue addressed by the NTEU president. She cited “inadequate pay and benefits” for federal workers—calling the president’s proposal for a 2.6 percent pay raise in 2003 for the federal civilian workforce “a slap in the face for every hard working federal employee,”—as well as the impact of sharply rising health care costs and insufficient resources for federal agencies, among other matters.

The NTEU leader said the administration’s 2003 pay proposal is not one it would make “if it were serious about fixing the human capital crisis.

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Kelley took particular aim at several provisions of S. 1612, the Managerial Flexibility Act of 2001, including those that would make personnel demonstration projects permanent without congressional approval; a proposal to grant to only managers the right to earn extended leave hours; and a “controversial new proposal” that would require agencies to prefund the retirement and health benefits costs for their future retirees.

Under that proposal, agencies would be required to pay such costs from their annual appropriations. In the face of insufficient appropriations or legislated spending caps, President Kelley said, the result would be either “no money to ensure payment of retiree health and retirement benefits—or agencies would be forced to further restrict employee training programs, reduce public services or conduct a reduction in force of federal employees.” She urged the committee to “soundly reject” this proposal.

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