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Washington, D.C.-The president of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) today called for "a moratorium on any further contracting out" of federal government services until there is "a full accounting" of the size, nature and cost of the contractors who make up what has been decreed "the federal government's shadow workforce."

NTEU President Colleen M. Kelley said in testimony provided a congressional subcommittee holding oversight hearings under the Federal Activities Inventory Reform Act (FAIR), that so long as there is a mandatory inventory of the federal government's in-house workforce made available under FAIR, it is only proper that the size, makeup and cost of the contractor workforce be detailed as well. Failure to do so, she told the Government Management, Information and Technology Subcommittee of the House Government Reform Committee, "presents a skewed picture of the actual work being performed on the federal government's behalf." Moreover, Kelley said, an expanding contractor work force continues "to undermine the federal government's accountability" to the American people. She used her subcommittee testimony to restate forcefully NTEU's long-standing opposition to the virtually-uncontrolled

The union president said that "poor [contractor] management and ineffective federal oversight' 'of contracting "has led to astronomical amounts of waste and fraud that have been well documented" by both the General Accounting Office (GAO) and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). She noted that GAO and OMB reports have cited examples of fraud and abuse running into "the billions of dollars."

Kelley called the attention of the subcommittee to a study earlier this year by the Brooking Institution's Center for Public Service that put the number of federal contractor jobs at some 5.6 million?including 4 million positions in services and another 1.6 million providing goods.

BY contrast, she said, the in?house federal civilian workforce, which has declined by more than 300,000 in recent years, is at its smallest level in more than 35 years.

"It is said time and again" throughout senior levels of government, Kelley said, "that the most important resource the federal government has is its employees. Yet, they are a resource Congress seems ready to jettison ...at every possible turn."

NTEU is the largest independent federal union, representing some 155,000 employees in 26 agencies and departments.