WASHINGTON, May 3 (UPI) -- Unions and legislators are supporting a bill to prevent the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers from outsourcing 2,000 jobs involving work on nearly 200 U.S. dams.
And the controversy looks like repeating a similar one last year, GovExec.com reported Tuesday.
The 2006 Federal Locks and Lock and Dam Facilities Act was introduced last week in the U.S. House of Representatives by Reps. Lane Evans, D-Ill., and Ray LaHood, R-Ill. It would define as "inherently governmental" the operation and maintenance of locks and dams. That designation would prevent the Army Corps from conducting a public-private job competition under the rules of the Office of Management and Budget's Circular A-76, GovExec.com said.
In a letter soliciting support, Evans and LaHood described the nation's inland and intra-coastal waterways -- and the locks and dams that control movement along them -- as critical components of the transportation infrastructure.
"These locks and dams are operated and maintained by skilled federal employees who, each day, exercise their discretion on behalf of the U.S. government," the co-sponsors wrote.
The lock and dam competition, if allowed to go forward, would be the second-largest public-private competition completed under the present A-76 rules, after a 2,300-position contest at the Federal Aviation Administration last year that was won by a contractor.
For the purposes of public-private competition, the Army Corps has designated lockmasters -- the supervisors at some lock and dam facilities -- as performing work that is inherently governmental, while the jobs of the operators and mechanics under them are classified as commercial and thus eligible for privatization.
But a coalition of 14 Defense unions is arguing that all employees working on the waterways perform inherently governmental work, the report said.
