AFGE Leader Urges 'Common-Sense' Approach to Sourcing Decisions

Too many decisions based on arbitrary civilian workforce caps, union president testifies

WASHINGTON, March 29, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- In written testimony before a Senate panel this morning, the head of the American Federation of Government Employees laid out a "common-sense vision" for determining whether government work should be performed by federal employees or contractors.

The key to this approach is in adhering to existing statutory requirements that attempt to remake the sourcing process into one that is more accountable to taxpayers and less unfair to federal employees, AFGE National President John Gage said in testimony prepared for the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs subcommittee on contracting oversight.

"The good news is that there is an adequate statutory structure to ensure that this common-sense vision can become a reality. The bad news is that this Administration, like its predecessors, is unwilling to enforce the relevant sourcing and workforce management laws," Gage said. "As a result, too many sourcing decisions continue to be made on the basis of the wrong criteria, particularly arbitrary constraints on the size of the federal workforce."

Gage offered six recommendations for ensuring the interests of taxpayers are promoted:

• Enforce prohibitions against direct conversions;
• Manage federal employees by budgets and workloads, not arbitrary constraints;
• Compile inventories of contracts;
• Use insourcing to reduce costs;
• Cap taxpayer-funded contractor compensation; and
• Abolish the Office of Federal Procurement Policy and transfer its functions to OMB's resource management offices.

A complete copy of the testimony is available at www.afge.org.

The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) is the largest federal employee union, representing 625,000 workers in the federal government and the government of the District of Columbia.

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SOURCE American Federation of Government Employees

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