“Few politicians can resist the temptation of kicking the hell out of federal employees.”
—Congressman William Ford
(D-Mich., 1965-1995)

By GREGORY N. HEIRES

President Bush’s plan to privatize the jobs of half the federal civilian workforce is part of a broad attack on unions, civil service and government services.

“This is not about saving money, it’s about moving money to the private sector,” said Bobby L. Harnage Sr., president of the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents 600,000 federal workers.

War against federal workers
Mr. Harnage charged the administration with waging war on rank-and-file federal employees. “If their jobs aren’t privatized, this administration is determined to gut their civil service protections or bust their unions,” he said.

The administration announced the privatization plan, which doesn’t require Congressional approval, on Nov. 14.

White House officials said the administration’s goal is to make it easier for private companies to compete with federal workers to provide government services.

The administration wants to put half of the federal jobs that are not “inherently governmental” up for competition within two years and eventually extend that number to 850,000. The jobs slated for competition deal with “commercial activities” like cafeteria services but do not include posts with management or public policy responsibilities.

Josh R. Freeman, a labor historian at Queens College, said that the administration didn’t make a particularly convincing case that subjecting the federal workforce to competition would actually lead to more efficiency.

That suggests the administration may simply be carrying out an ideologically driven agenda of shifting government resources to the private sector, Mr. Freeman said.

In fact, as New York Times columnist and economist Paul Krugman wrote in a Nov. 19 article, the record of privatization does not substantiate the claim that privatization promotes efficiency. He noted that the targeted employees only account for 2 percent of the federal budget, which means any savings would only have a scant impact on overall spending.

Gene Carroll, director of the Union Leadership Program at Cornell University, described the privatization plan as part of a far-reaching campaign to undermine the job protections of federal employees and weaken unions in general.

Mr. Carroll pointed out that eliminating collective bargaining rights was a key goal of the administration when it sought legislation to set up the new Department of Homeland Security.

In pressing for the law, the Bush administration argued that it was inappropriate for employees of the new department to have civil service protections because of the sensitive nature of their work. As a result of the new law, 175,000 federal workers lost their collective bargaining rights overnight.

“The homeland security legislation has allowed the administration to advance long-stalled schemes to eliminate the checks and balances ensured by collective bargaining and to transform the civil service into a politicized workforce of hacks and cronies,” Mr. Harnage said.

In another swipe at federal employees, President Bush indicated in November that he would limit the next year’s raise for federal employees to 3.1 percent rather than the 4.1 percent recommended by the U.S. Congress.

In a letter to Congress, Mr. Bush said that the full 4.1 percent increase, which included a “locality adjustment” in addition to a basic pay hike, “would interfere with our nation’s ability to pursue the war on terrorism.”

Guns versus butter
To justify his decision, Mr. Bush relied on a law that permits the president to cite a “national emergency or serious economic conditions” to withhold a full pay increase for government employees. His action lends credence to union critics who charge working families will be hurt by the administration’s military policy because it will strain government resources.

Some union officials view the assault on federal workers as a further sign that the policies of the Bush administration constitute the greatest attack against organized labor since the Reagan administration a generation ago. President Reagan’s decision to break the strike by the air traffic controllers union, PATCO, undercut labor’s power and helped fuel the decline in the percentage of the country’s workforce with union representation.

Steven Stallone of the International Longshore Workers Union called the president’s use of the anti-labor Taft-Harley Act to intervene in the lockout of West Coast dockworkers in November as a “PATCO-like situation.”

Before taking that action, the administration threatened to put the West Coast docks under the control of military troops and conservative legislators pushed for legislation to abolish the ILWU.

With his party now in control of the House and the Senate, many unionists fear that President Bush’s recent attack on unionized federal employees is a sign that he will soon expand his attack on organized labor.