Employees of a Defense Logistics Agency distribution depot in Warner Robins, Ga., have failed in an effort to contest the outsourcing of operations at the facility to a private firm.
In April, Manassas, Va.-based EG&G Logistics won a contract to run the depot after more than a year of public-private competition between the facility's employees and private firms. Approximately 450 depot jobs are to be outsourced under the competition, which was run under Office of Management and Budget Circular A-76.
Four depot employees as well as two groups represented by the American Federation of Government Employees appealed the decision to DLA, claiming the cost comparison between the private firm's bid and DLA's bid was erroneous. When that appeal was rejected, they brought their protest to the General Accounting Office's Comptroller General, who dismissed it on Wednesday on the grounds that the employees are not considered "interested parties" under the law.
"We have consistently found that individual employees of disappointed bidders or offerors are not interested parties to protest on behalf of their employer," the decision read.
The depot employees argued that since they would be adversely impacted by a decision to contract out their work, they should qualify as interested parties. But under the Competition in Contracting Act of 1984, interested parties are defined as offerors who would be affected by the award of a contract.
If the work were kept in-house, the Comptroller General ruled, then no contract would be awarded. Therefore, the government's bid for the work isn't really an offer and government employees aren't offerors.
The employees asked GAO to use a broader definition of the term "interested parties" than the one set forth in the Competition in Contracting Act. They cited language in the 1998 Federal Activities Inventory Reform Act as evidence that agency employees and their union representatives can be considered offerors.
But GAO disagreed, saying that the point of the FAIR Act is to determine if federal jobs should be eligible for outsourcing or not, and the interested parties it refers to are simply those who can challenge the inclusion or omission of certain government jobs from FAIR Act inventories.
"Nothing in the Act's express language or in its legislative history suggests that its use or definition of the term "interested party" was intended to extend beyond the context in which it appears," GAO ruled.
NEXT STORY: TSP's C Fund drops in May