Nation & world briefing
Bush aims to privatize
half of all federal jobs
Ron Hutcheson
Knight Ridder Newspapers (KRT)
WASHINGTON — The Bush ad
ministration announced plans
Thursday to turn over as many as
850,000 federal jobs to private com
panies in an effort to improve serv
ice and cut costs.
The proposal could eliminate
about half of the 1.7 million federal
civilian workers by contracting out
jobs ranging from lawn mowing to
satellite tracking. Private companies
could bid for the work under a
process that may be outlined as ear
ly as Friday in the Federal Register,
which gives public notice of all gov
ernment actions.
The aggressive effort to pare down
the federal work force is sure to in
flame labor unions already upset by
President Bush’s plan to waive civil
service protections at his new de
partment of homeland security.
The Washington area has the
largest concentration of federal work
ers — about 360,000 — but the
move’s effect would be felt nationwide.
Bush administration officials say
they can impose the new bidding
process without congressional ap
proval after a 30-day review period.
“The Bush administration seems
fairly antagonistic toward its federal
employee work force. If they can’t
bust their unions or take away their
civil service protections, they’re go
ing to privatize their jobs,” said John
Threlkeld, a spokesman for the
American Federation of Govern
ment Employees, a 600,000-mem
ber affiliate of the AFL-CIO.
White House spokesman Scott
McClellan did not answer directly
when asked if federal workers should
fear for their jobs.
Advocates of contracting out
government services predict sav
ings of more than 30 percent when
federal jobs are put out for compet
itive bids. Skeptics contend the
government is ill equipped to moni
tor work by private contractors,
who may skimp on quality.
Office Depot gets
recycling pressure
from paper group
David Fleshier
South Florida Sun-Sentinel (KRT)
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — After
embarrassing Staples Inc. into agree
ing to sell more recycled products, a
coalition of environmental groups is
threatening to launch a similar cam
paign against Office Depot.
ForestEthics and the Dogwood
Alliance declared victory this week
in their two-year campaign to per
suade Staples to increase the recy
cled content of its paper products
to 30 percent. Now the two groups
are preparing a letter to Office De
pot urging the Delray Beach, Fla.,
company to make the same com
mitment or face a campaign of
picketing, shareholder actions and
denunciations by celebrities.
“Staples now set a very high stan
dard,” said Todd Paglia, director of the
Paper Campaign for ForestEthics, a
San Francisco environmental group.
“We’re hoping that Office Depot re
sponds with a strong environmental
policy, and there isn’t a year or two of
campaigning on this issue to get them
to see the light.”
Eileen Dunn, Office Depot’s vice
president for investor and public re
lations, said the company already
has high environmental standards.
She said Office Depot offers more
than 1,700 products made at least
partially from recycled materials, in
cluding a desk-organizer with a recy
cled content of 85 percent. And she
said the company, which operates
more than 1,000 stores, requires
suppliers to certify that none of their
products comes from rainforests or
old-growth forests.
Dunn said the company’s recy
cling percentage was already “in the
double digits,” but she was unable to
say what the percentage was.
“Office Depot has been focused on
the environment,” she said.
But Paglia said Staples had also re
quired suppliers to certify that no
paper came from old-growth forests,
and the claim turned out not to be
true. ForestEthics released a report
last August, “The Credibility Gap at
Staples,” which claimed that Staples’
suppliers cut down trees in environ
mentally sensitive forests of Indone
sia and northern Canada.
© 2002 South Florida Sun-Sentinel.
Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune
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The Office of Management and
Budget has identified dozens of job
categories that could be turned over to
private contractors, including securi
ty in government buildings, aircraft
and railway maintenance, geological
surveys, legal services and the over
hauling and testing of space systems.
© 2002, Knight Ridder/Tribune
Information Services.
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