Delegates back  efforts to stop contracting out, promote funding for services

Delegates overwhelmingly embraced several resolutions that have been at the center of AFT Public Employees divisional work over the last two years: privatization and contracting out of public services, and tax and budget policy.

Delegates sent a strong message to the Bush administration and other policymakers when they passed resolutions against privatizing government and offshore outsourcing, a growing trend in both the public and private sectors of shipping work overseas where wages are lower and labor laws are loose.

Offshoring drew particularly sharp criticism from delegates, largely because it has taken privatization of government jobs to a new level—one in which the work and wages are being removed from the U.S. economy, threatening the viability of communities, cities and states, noted AFT vice president Al Fondy.

James Close, a delegate from the New York State Public Employees Federation, which submitted the resolution, described offshore outsourcing as “the most insidious threat to public employees.”

And Paul Krell, a delegate from Connecticut’s Administrative and Residual Employees Union, said, “it’s closer than you might think.”

Delegates also backed a Wisconsin Professional Employees Council (WPEC) resolution against the so-called Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR) and any other proposal to permanently limit the authority of elected officials to tax and spend.

Wisconsin is among the growing list of states where anti-tax, anti-government activists are pushing TABOR policies.

“I was very pleased that the general delegation recognized the importance of taking a position on TABOR,” said delegate Art Foeste, a WPEC member who works for the Wisconsin revenue department as a corporate tax auditor, noting that TABOR initiatives are an offspring of California’s Proposition 13, which “has killed California” by limiting property tax increases.

“The taxpayer bill of rights, while it has the intuitive appeal of lower taxes, has the potential to be the most destructive piece of legislation a legislature could pass,” said Foeste, a member of the AFT Public Employees program and policy council. “It slowly starves education, social services, care for the elderly and all other governmental services that civilized societies provide.”

The resolutions call on the AFT and its affiliates to take legislative action at all levels of government that will be supported by member mobilization and education.