Federal jobs in Maine at risk Privatization may force layoffs

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An estimated 1,800 federal employees in Maine could be forced out of their jobs as the Bush administration continues its push toward privatizing up to 25 percent of the federal work force, officials confirmed Tuesday.

The transition to the private sector could take several years, officials said, but some people already are worried, including U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe.

“This really could have an impact on the economy and people of Maine and we’re fully taking a look at it here,” Snowe spokeswoman Carolyn Holmes said Tuesday. “It’s Congress’ job to check the impact of [the privatization plan] and not just do this in one fell swoop.

“Senator Snowe is definitely concerned, and she wants a full review” of any jobs targeted for so-called “outsourcing,” Holmes said.

Although Maine has relatively few federal workers – just 7,500 out of 1.6 million worldwide – the jobs are among the best-paying in a state that historically ranks near the bottom in per-capita income.

Snowe already has intervened for civilian workers at the former Cutler Naval Base. They were in the midst of competing for their jobs against private companies in 2000, when the Navy agreed to preserve 84 civilian jobs if Snowe and other members of Maine’s congressional delegation agreed to stop fighting the closure of the base.

The deal secures the civilian jobs at Cutler only through 2005, according to Elmer Harmon, president of Local 2635 of the Association of Federal Government Employees. At that time, the jobs could again be subjected to private competition.

“Contractors are motivated by only one thing, and that’s profit,” Harmon said Tuesday. “Government employees are not motivated by profit, so any time you have a contract to assume the work of the federal government, it’s a bad deal for the taxpayer.”

Meanwhile, 15 civilian jobs at a Navy satellite station in Prospect Harbor are being studied for possible privatization, Harmon said.

Maine’s federal work force is spread throughout the state, from 336 employees at the Defense Finance and Accounting Service center in Limestone to Bath Iron Works to the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, according to Edward Gorham, president of the Maine AFL-CIO.

Nonmilitary-related federal jobs include the Internal Revenue Service, Social Security Administration, law enforcement agents, food inspectors and labor analysts.

Of the 7,500 federal jobs in Maine, about 5,200 are Department of Defense civilian jobs, according to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

“I don’t know if it can be stopped at this point,” Gorham said of President Bush’s Competitive Sourcing Program. “I’d like to think that Congress would stop it, but it hasn’t shown much backbone yet with regard to issues with the [Bush] administration.”

The move toward privatizing some federal jobs began during the Clinton Administration in 1998, when federal agencies and departments were required to inventory all in-house jobs that involved performing commercial activities.

Commercial activities are defined as work that can be done by the private sector, as opposed to “inherently governmental” jobs such as park rangers or employees who have decision-making authority, sources said.

According to the Office of Management and Budget, which is pushing hard for federal agencies to comply with the administration’s goals, an estimated 850,000 federal employees perform commercial work, or about 53 percent of the entire federal civilian work force.

The administration wants half of the 850,000 jobs opened to private competition over time. For example, Bush wanted at least 5 percent of the jobs to either be directly converted to the private sector or opened to private competition by 2002, and another 5 percent this year. No goals have yet been set for fiscal 2003.

Under the Bush initiative, federal employees get a chance to compete with the private sector by developing their own proposals for getting the work done as efficiently as possible. Therefore, even those jobs that are targeted for privatization can be salvaged if the federal employees can underbid the private sector, so to speak.

The OMB estimates that the private sector can perform work for about 30 percent less than government employees, but union officials claim the estimate is inflated and misleading.

“That’s a bunch of hokum,” Gorham, the AFL-CIO president, said about the OMB estimates.

“Contractors might initially underbid federal employees,” Harmon, the Cutler union chief, said, “but in the out years, the costs will escalate.”

Bryan Hubbard, spokesman for the Defense Finance and Accounting Service, a division of the Department of Defense, said Tuesday it’s too early to know whether any of the Limestone jobs will be forced to compete with the private sector. He said DFAS has conducted six studies so far, which resulted in just one of its services being privatized.

“We were going to be looking at all of our functions and business lines to make sure we’re offering the right services to the right people in the most effective way possible,” Hubbard said Tuesday.

An effort is under way in Washington to exempt the National Park Service and the Department of Agriculture from the Competitive Sourcing Program, but supporters of the initiative are expected to fight to keep the program intact, arguing that no federal agency should be considered special.

Len Bobinchock, deputy superintendent of Acadia National Park in Bar Harbor, said Tuesday that park leadership has been loath to upset the rank and file by telling them that their jobs could be sacrificed under the Competitive Sourcing Program.

That concern is echoed by other federal managers, who are concerned about morale and about carrying out their public missions with less money, since the agencies must divert money from other services to pay for job studies.

“We went through a similar process in the early 1980s, and the end result was the same,” Bobinchock said. “It didn’t result in any major reduction in government employees as far as I know.”

Early estimates show that 70 percent of Acadia’s 121 full-time equivalent jobs could be privatized, a number that alarms Ken Olson, president of Friends of Acadia.

In a letter Monday to Snowe, Olson asked for continued help from the senator in protecting the quality of the services provided by park staff.

“Even if the federal jobs were replaced one-for-one by private jobs, outsourcing would completely disrupt the economy of this small community,” Olson wrote, “for unspecified and we think questionable financial savings.”

He added, “Where are 86 park workers going to find [comparable] jobs in eastern Maine?”