Agencies list tens of thousands of jobs as ‘commercial’

Private companies could perform 88,000 jobs at 35 government agencies, according to the Office of Management and Budget's first 2003 inventories identifying federal positions eligible for outsourcing.

The 1998 Federal Activities Inventory Reform (FAIR) Act requires agencies to compile lists of jobs that are "commercial in nature" and could be performed by contractors. Inventories also contain lists of jobs that are "inherently governmental," meaning that, by law, they must be performed by federal employees. Every year OMB reviews the lists and releases them to Congress and the public in several stages.

Agencies can open jobs classified as commercial in FAIR Act inventories to competition with the private sector. But OMB is quick to point out that they don't have to subject all such jobs to competitions.

The first round of 2003 inventories, announced in the Nov. 21 Federal Register, covered 173,500 positions at about 35 agencies, including the Interior, Housing and Urban Development and Transportation departments, and NASA.

Of the 173,500 jobs listed, 51 percent, or 88,000, were classified as commercial. Agencies designated the remaining 85,500 jobs as inherently governmental.

The Transportation Department listed about 34,440 positions as commercial in nature--the bulk of them at the Federal Aviation Administration.

In its 2002 inventory, Transportation classified air traffic control jobs as commercial, a move that National Air Traffic Controllers Association officials said opened the door to privatization. The designation prompted lawmakers to attach union-backed language protecting controller jobs from privatization to the 2003 FAA reauthorization bill. After months of debate and opposition from the Bush administration, the Senate late last week approved a conference report on the bill that would impose a one-year moratorium on the privatization of any air traffic jobs.

The designation for air traffic controllers did not change in the 2003 FAIR Act inventory, according to NATCA, but spokesman Doug Church said the classification is not as relevant now that lawmakers have protected the federal controller jobs for at least a year.

NASA's 2003 inventory listed 6,980 positions as commercial, most of which were already commercial in 2002. The agency designated 12,070 positions as inherently governmental.

As of Tuesday afternoon, Interior and HUD had not yet posted their 2003 inventories on their Web sites. In four rounds of 2002 inventories, agencies declared 858,205 federal jobs at 92 agencies eligible for public-private competition. This represented a slight increase over 2001, when agencies designated 849,389 of civilian government jobs as commercial.

Government workers, unions, contractors and other interested parties can challenge FAIR Act job classifications, and can file appeals if they lose their initial challenges.

Following a July Commerce Department decision to reclassify 157 seafood inspectors at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration as inherently governmental, the American Federation of Government Employees boasted unprecedented success at fighting 2002 inventory classifications. The union won at least two other appeals of 2002 FAIR Act designations.