EEOC union hits plan to privatize

A Bush administration proposal to hire a private vendor to run a national "contact" center to take calls from employees with possible workplace bias claims has raised the ire of a national union.

Hundreds of union members employed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission are expected to protest the proposal outside the agency's headquarters in Washington, D.C., today at noon.

Attorney Gabrielle Martin, president of Local 216 of the American Federation of Government Employees, said the administration's plan could jeopardize the rights of workers who turn to the agency for help because the center's staff would be low paid and not as highly trained.

The 1,500-member union of paralegals, investigators, and attorneys also fears that the agency's plan to outsource jobs currently held by investigative assistants might be expanded to include their own positions.

"The chair of the EEOC has said that no one will lose jobs because of this," Martin said. "We'd like proof."

Since taking office, President Bush has recommended that more than 800,000 federal positions be privatized. The nation's unions are against such plans, because they reduce membership in the public sector, which has grown even as layoffs have reduced the number of union workers at private companies.

The EEOC's chairwoman, Cari Dominguez, maintains the agency must be revamped because the time it takes to resolve bias complaints increased to 541 days in 2003, up from 418 in 2002.

Agency officials also maintain that its workers receive millions of calls, but only a fraction concern workplace discrimination.

Dominguez has also sought to reduce costs stemming from litigation and backlogs. The call center is part of that effort. But, Martin said, "The administration has not been able to justify why a call center would be a cost savings."

Agency spokeswoman Jennifer Kaplan said the call center would shift responsibility for incoming calls away from investigators and other professionals to workers trained to screen them and refer callers to the appropriate agency. Kaplan said the center would not strip agency workers of their jobs.

A call center was recommended last year as part of a restructuring advanced by the agency, she said. The EEOC began accepting proposals from vendors in April. A pilot call center will be launched in early 2005, Kaplan said.

The call center proposal is one of several causing alarm among the agency's unionized workers. Last year, the National Academy of Public Administration recommended that the EEOC shutter 41 of 51 field offices. The goal, according to news reports, was to increase the agency's representation in areas where employment is higher and to reduce the number of offices in areas with high unemployment due to layoffs.

Kaplan said the agency has not moved to institute that proposal.

Lawmakers and political analysts had mixed reaction to the call center proposal yesterday. Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, drafted a letter to ranking Senate members urging them to block a request by the agency for $5 million in fiscal year 2005 for a restructuring that would include the call center. The letter described the call center proposal as risky and said any additional money should be used to hire more investigators, attorneys, and mediators.

Robert Zelnick, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and chairman of the journalism department at Boston University, said he is concerned about the EEOC process. "The agency will not solve its problems with privatization," he said. "But it should be encouraged to experiment because the current system has been such an abject failure."

Diane E. Lewis can be reached at dlewis@globe.com.