Union chief predicts job losses at GSA warehouses

Some workers will lose their jobs at eight General Services Administration warehouses and distribution centers, the head of the workers' union said Friday.

Bobby Harnage, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, said that some of the facilities may close this year, though the union is in negotiations with GSA to keep job losses to a minimum.

"There will be some job losses," Harnage said.

Negotiators from the union and GSA met on Thursday and plan to meet again next week in an effort to reach agreement on the fate of the facilities, which employ nearly 2,000 workers.

GSA last summer announced it would close the eight warehouses and distribution centers in the Federal Supply Service's stock program. The American Federation of Government Employees has been fighting that decision ever since, and convinced GSA Administrator David Barram to hold off on the closures until an independent study of the warehouses' future was completed.

Earlier this month, consultants from the Logistics Management Institute of McLean, Va., completed a study that offered several options for the warehouses' future, including "a more efficient status quo," in which the current stock program would be improved without closing any facilities. Other options included closing one or more of the warehouses while streamlining program operations, contracting out some of the work to a private vendor or closing all of the warehouses.

In a recent memo to GSA employees, Federal Supply Service Commissioner Frank Pugliese also said GSA might choose a course of action not included among the four options.

A GSA spokeswoman said Friday that the agency had no comment on the ongoing negotiations.