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Washington, D.C.—Proposed changes to regulations by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) simply reinforce an empty gesture made by Congress last year that leaves federal employees in a second-class status when it comes to protesting government contracting out decisions, the leader of the nation’s largest independent union of federal workers said today.

In comments submitted to GAO, National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) President Colleen M. Kelley said the proposed regulations and the underlying law do nothing to correct a fundamental unfairness—namely, that federal workers lack the same rights that private contractors have to appeal an agency contracting decision to GAO despite the fact that their jobs are at stake.

Instead, language in the fiscal 2005 Defense Authorization Act provided bid protest standing to a management official—acting as a representative of the employees’ in-house bid in a public-private competition—known as the “agency tender official,” or ATO.

But as a manager exempt from contracting out, the ATO lacks any incentive to pursue a protest. In addition, there is a strong professional disincentive for the ATO to file a bid protest, as the ATO is in the untenable position of second-guessing the work of another, and possibly superior, manager who conducted the competition. “This purported solution is wholly inadequate,” Kelley said.

“The only way to level the playing field between the private sector and the in-house bidder,” the NTEU president said, “is to allow the federal employees who stand to lose their jobs if they lose the competition to file their own protests.”

Apart from that broad and key issue, President Kelley was critical of GAO’s proposed changes on several fronts. Among them: the ATO is required to file a bid protest when there is a reasonable basis for a protest and the “majority of employees” engaged in the function at issue requests that one be filed. But there is no attempt by GAO—or by Congress in its legislation last year—to identify who serves as the employees’ representative for that purpose.

NTEU is urging GAO to state in its final regulations that the head of a union representing employees in the function under consideration for contracting be deemed the employee representative.

Also, the proposed GAO changes would allow bid protests—but only by contractors—in “streamlined competition” involving 65 or fewer federal employees. Congressional intent was clear, Kelley said, that there were to be no protests filed in connection with a “streamlined” job competition.

As the largest independent federal union, NTEU represents some 150,000 employees in 30 agencies and departments.