A federal court will allow the Air Force to contract out more than 300 federal jobs at Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M., to a Native American contractor without a job competition.
On June 30, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia Judge Ricardo Urbina rejected a request from the American Federation of Government Employees labor union to halt the outsourcing.
The Air Force has not made a final decision to contract out the work. But the service has said the civil engineering jobs could go to Chugach Management Services of Anchorage, Alaska, as early as Aug. 1.
Typically, before federal jobs are privatized employees have the right to compete against a contractor with the work going to the lowest bidder. However, federal law permits agencies to skip the competition if the work goes to a company owned by more than 50 percent Native Americans.
Employees had challenged the Air Force's use of the law, claiming they will be unfairly harmed if the work is contracted out.
But Urbina ruled that the Native America companies, like Chugach, are economically disadvantaged and the public interest favors helping them. Also, he said, the Air Force would struggle to perform the work in-house because many federal employees have already left their jobs in anticipation of the work being outsourced.
The union will appeal the decision.
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