Bush's Plans for More Privatization Prompt Rally in Opposition
A coalition of labor and civil rights leaders gathered at Freedom Plaza yesterday to denounce the Bush administration's efforts to turn more federal work over to the private sector.</br></br>Between chants of "No privatization!" by members of federal unions, speakers contended that the administration's competitive sourcing initiative would take federal jobs away from minorities, women and veterans and weaken a civil service that protects the integrity of federal programs for all Americans.</br></br>"We perform our jobs in the public interest, not in the interest of profits or to promote any political agenda," Leora Rosen, a social science analyst at the Justice Department, told the crowd.</br></br>President Bush has said agencies should compete with companies for as many as 850,000 government jobs that are considered commercial in nature. The administration says it does not care who wins the right to perform the jobs because the competition will drive agencies to become more efficient and lower costs.</br></br>Directives from the Office of Management and Budget for agencies to put up half of their commercial jobs for bid over the next few years have roiled the federal workforce and created morale problems in some agencies. OMB hopes to issue streamlined rules for job competitions in the next few weeks, but the new procedures seem unlikely to ease employee concerns.