Bush to privatize 850,000 jobs
'All-out war on federal workers'
By Milt Neidenberg
The federal workforce is the latest target of the Bush
administration's anti-union blitz. In what one union leader has
called an "all-out war against federal employees," the Office
of Management and Budget has announced it will seek to
eliminate 850,000 federal jobs over the next few years, sending
a shock wave through the workers and their unions.
This sweeping change would affect workers in virtually all
functions of government and in every federal agency--from those
monitoring the food we eat and caring for the country's war
veterans to those administering Social Security benefits and
other vital services.
Top-level bureaucrats in the administration are being
ordered to contract out to private companies work now done
in-house by government workers. President George W. Bush wants
15 percent of the targeted 850,000 jobs gone by October 2003,
growing to 50 percent within two years. Federal agencies are
under strict orders to outsource jobs to the private sector.
The plan is to rig the bidding process to make sure this
happens.
Was this huge assault on the workers voted on anywhere? No.
The administration is doing it through a revision of federal
regulations. An inter-agency group unearthed a 1955 regulation
known as Circular A-76, which defines the rules governing
competition between public and private sector organizations.
Basically, the regulation, passed 47 years ago, showed a
"preference" for public sector workers to provide governmental
services. A 64-page proposal will allow federal agencies to
wipe out those preferences, following a 30-day period. And the
sweeping changes don't require congressional approval.
The document recommends details (Circular A-97) on how
federal agencies can assist state and municipal agencies in
privatizing their services, too. At a time when state and local
governments have huge budget deficits, they will be only too
glad to work closely with federal agencies in contracting out
jobs to non-union, low-wage companies.
The human cost will be enormous as this vengeful
privatizing, with its downsizing and layoffs, victimizes
millions of workers and their loved ones.
The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the
largest federal employee union, representing 700,000 workers
nationally and overseas, has correctly described this
anti-union, anti-worker ploy as political payback. According to
a number of union officials, the administration would have the
authority to award contracts to whomever it wants. It would
have total political discretion to award friends and contract
out government services to its profit-driven clients, which
will wind up costing the taxpayers more.
AFGE President Bobby L. Harnage Sr. points out that federal
workers have more expertise and experience than any outside
contractors. He charged that the Bush administration has
"declared all-out war on federal employees. ... This
administration is selling the federal government at bargain
basement prices to their corporate friends who then make
campaign contributions back. This is not about saving money.
It's about moving money to the private sector." (New York
Times, Nov. 15)
This move to privatize close to a million jobs comes on the
heels of the infamous Homeland Security legislation, which is
set to merge 22 federal agencies under one giant super-agency,
stripping the federal unions of their collective bargaining
rights. In the name of national security, it allows the
employers to screen out thousands of government workers and
terrorize them all.
The Bush administration has decided to turn back the clock
and phase out the current workforce and its unions, which have
been dedicated to serving the public for over half a
century.
Lessons from the past
Nevertheless, all these nefarious plans could backfire if
the labor movement applies the lessons of the past. History has
confirmed over and over again that growth and gains made by the
trade unions are inextricably woven and integrated into the
broader political struggles of the multinational mass
movement.
The AFGE leadership and its rank and file should know this
all too well. The union is now in its 70th year of existence.
It received its charter from the American Federation of Labor
on Aug. 18, 1932, in the midst of the worst capitalist crisis
in history. The birth of this union was part of the historic
struggles, led by class-conscious workers, progressives and
communists, that built the organized labor movement. The union
started in 1932 with 500 chartered members and has since grown
to over 600,000 members.
The history of the American Federation of State, County and
Municipal Employees (AFSCME), one of the largest unions in the
country with over 1.4 million members, also confirms that a
period of activism for social and political change is favorable
for unions. The civil rights and women's struggles, the
anti-war movement of the 1960s and 1970s, and the resulting
"war on poverty" were instrumental in opening the doors to the
growth of the federal, state and municipal work force. This
brought waves of African Americans, Latinos, women and other
low-paid service workers who were politically more conscious
into the public sector unions.
When New York District Council 37 of AFSCME, the largest
public sector city union in the country, celebrated 50 years of
growth in 1994, it put out a statement saying that the union's
advances "paralleled gains by the civil rights movement, as
poor and working class people fought not only for civil rights,
but for a fair share of income and security in a wealthy
land."
The truth is that Dr. Martin Luther King did much to build
the public sector union movement. In fact, he was assassinated
while supporting the sanitation workers of Memphis. It was the
sacrifices of King and millions of others who took to the
streets that brought about pro-labor legislation--not the
goodwill of the Democratic Party, which claimed the credit.
The organized labor movement, including the public sector
unions, cannot continue to look to the Democrats, as they did
in this election. When these so-called friends of labor
capitulated to the Bush administration on the war, that only
whetted the appetites of the capitalist politicians to hack
away at unions.
It is crucial that the public sector unions and the labor
movement in general not become isolated from their historic
allies: people of color, women, youth who need jobs and a
decent education, seniors without health care and pensions, the
increasingly desperate unemployed, and the lesbian, gay, bi and
transgender workers.
Currently, these multinational forces are growing frustrated
and angry. Along with an anti-war movement that is getting
stronger, they constitute a powerful force for change. The
hundreds of thousands of people who marched and rallied against
the war on Oct. 26 are now reaching out to even larger forces
for national actions on the Martin Luther King weekend in
January. The message to the Bush administration: that the war
against the Iraqi people and the war against labor are
unacceptable.
This fightback demands closer ties between the organized
labor movement and the diverse, class-conscious and militant
movement in the streets, in the tradition of the historic
struggles that led to the explosion of trade-union growth in
the 1930s.
Reprinted from the Nov. 28, 2002, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyrighted
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