Lawmakers move to stall Army bid to privatize civilian jobs

Members of Congress are lining up to slow an Army effort to privatize its repair depots, arsenals and ammunition plants-and the jobs of more than 15,000 Army civilian employees who work at these sites.

In an Oct. 22 letter, five lawmakers called on Army Secretary Thomas White to halt a plan to privatize facilities in the Army's industrial base, including seven federal arsenals, five repair depots, and 14 ammunition plants across the country.

On Aug. 13, White directed the Army Materiel Command to draw up plans for selling, merging or turning these facilities into federal government corporations, according to an Aug. 20 Army memorandum that summarizes the plan. The privatization plans are due back to White by Nov. 28.

In their letter, the lawmakers criticized the Army for pursuing widespread privatization without input from Congress. "This matter must not be presented to Congress as a 'done deal'-arranged when Congress may be out of session," said the letter, signed by Sens. Richard Durbin, D-Ill.; Tom Harkin, D-Iowa; Charles Grassley, R-Iowa; and Reps. Lane Evans, D-Ill. and Jim Leach, R-Iowa.

Army Assistant Secretary Claude Bolton told Durbin that privatization was not "imminent" in a phone conversation last week and added that Congress would be involved in the planning process, according to a member of Durbin's staff. Army spokeswoman Cynthia Martin said the service is preparing a formal reply to the lawmakers.

The Army plan applies a series of recommendations from the Rand Corp., a nonprofit think tank, for reforming the Army's industrial base. These recommendations have not been made public. A Rand report released earlier this year advocated converting depots into federal government corporations as a way to cut the Army civilian workforce without actually eliminating jobs.

"It would allow the employees at that depot to keep their jobs at that location provided they would be willing to give up their status as government employees," said that report.

But the president of the nation's largest federal employee union said Congress would stop any effort to turn depots into government corporations. "The Congress will refuse to give the Army permission to convert its depots, arsenals, and other operations into government corporations because such an effort is clearly driven by self-imposed privatization quotas-'getting civilian jobs off the books'-rather than by efficiency or readiness concerns," said Bobby Harnage, president of the American Federation of Government Employees.

The Army Materiel Command is supposed to eliminate 8,530 civilian jobs under the 1997 Quadrennail Defense Review.

Privatized depots or arsenals could be hard pressed to turn a profit because they maintain excess capacity for producing equipment in times of war, according to a Senate staffer. "We view this as a thinly disguised effort to get rid of the arsenals," said the staffer, who asked not to be named. "If Congress says you've got to keep these overhead capacity than [arsenals] are by definition not competitive."

It was unclear how privatizing industrial facilities relates to the "Third Wave," the larger Army effort to study all Army jobs considered to be "noncore"-more than 210,000 jobs-for possible outsourcing. Noncore jobs at depots, ammunition plants, and arsenals are included in the Third Wave, according to Jim Wakefield, Deputy Chair of the Non-Core Competencies Working Group, which is heading up the review.

At an Oct. 10 Pentagon briefing with reporters, Army officials repeatedly stressed they had made no decisions about what to privatize as part of the Third Wave. But by mid-August, White had already directed the Army Materiel Command to draw up plans for privatizing arsenals and ammunition plants, according to the Aug. 20 memorandum.

At the request of Rep. Solomon Ortiz, D-Texas, the General Accounting Office will review both Army privatization plans, according to Barry Holman, associate director of Defense management issues at GAO.

Meanwhile, union officials and workers at affected facilities are anxious about how the Army plan could affect them. Everett Kelley, president of AFGE Local 1945 at the Army depot in Anniston, Ala., said workers were caught off-guard by the Army plan.

"We were preparing to be looked at through the Base Realignment and Closure process in 2005, but if this privatization plan flies we won't have to worry about it," he said. "Everybody is in shock."

Besides Anniston, the Corpus Christi and Red River Army Depots in Texas, Letterkenny and Tobyhanna Depots in Pennsylvania, and the Tooele Army Depot in Utah are included in the initiative. Seven Army arsenals also stand to be affected, including the Rock Island Arsenal in Illinois and New York's Watervliet Arsenal. Other arsenals such as the Redstone Arsenal in Alabama are engaged in research and development, which is not considered traditional arsenal work.