Prohibiting Privatization Permanently

Over the past several years, it has become common for provisions to be slipped into spending bills to limit the Bush administration's ability to put federal jobs up for competition with private firms. But the granddaddy of all such measures, according to the Local 3354 of the American Federation of Government Employees, was one preventing the privatization of the jobs of 6,000 federal employees who work in Agriculture Department offices across the nation.

That provision has had to be reintroduced every year since 2003 in annual USDA funding bills. But now, the union brags, the measure has been enshrined in the recent massive farm bill that Congress enacted after overriding President Bush's veto. That means those jobs have to remain federal permanently -- or until somebody can garner the votes to put them back on the block.