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Washington, D.C.—The leader of the nation’s largest independent union of federal employees hailed as “critically important steps in the right direction” yesterday’s approval by the Senate Appropriations Committee of a 4.1 percent 2003 pay raise for federal civilian employees and language that would block the use of quotas by the administration in determining what federal work might be subject to contracting to the private sector.

President Colleen M. Kelley of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) urged the full Senate to approve both the pay raise and the anti-contracting-out language advanced by Sens. Byron Dorgan (D-ND) and Barbara Mikulski (D-MD).

The vote on the pay raise followed similar action in the House Appropriations Committee which approved a proposal by Reps. Steny Hoyer (D-MD) and Frank Wolf (R-VA) calling for a civilian pay raise of 4.1 percent in 2003, rather than the 2.6 percent proposed by the administration.

On the contracting out issue, Kelley has been leading the fight against a directive from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) that all federal agencies have to open to the private sector this fiscal year five percent of their jobs considered commercial in nature—and an additional 10 percent of those jobs by the end of fiscal 2003.

“These arbitrary quotas, supported by nothing more than the administration’s desire to ultimately move the work of 425,000 federal employees to the private sector, are proving to be counterproductive as agencies seek to comply with the directive,” President Kelley said.

“They do not allow for any consideration to be given to the unique situations of agencies—and they are having a devastating impact on employee morale at a time when the government already is in a recruitment and retention crisis.”

She called quotas “a foolish way to address issues surrounding federal contracting,” and said “Congress has a chance to serve the nation especially well in this instance by enacting the Dorgan-Mikulski language into law.”

Under the language proposed by Sens. Dorgan and Mikulski, Kelley said, agencies would be permitted to contract out as they do now, engaging in as much or as little of the practice as necessary to accomplish their missions.

At the same time, the NTEU leader said, it would block the use of OMB’s outsourcing quotas, which by their very nature fail to allow any consideration to be given to the unique nature of federal agency services to the public—such as at the Internal Revenue Service, which is responsible for revenue collection.

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