Safeguarding Our Work From Contracting Out

Each year, we fight to protect our members’ work. Current contracting practices often hand over vital work performed by our members to for-profit businesses. Unfortunately, many of the transparency and accountability standards that apply when public workers deliver services do not apply to private companies. While government is ultimately responsible for delivering public services, private contractors are accountable to their shareholders and are not required to disclose important decision making processes to the public. While not all for-profit companies providing public services are bad actors, under the false pretense of maximizing efficiency, some often undercut industry pay standards and deliver substandard services at a higher cost to taxpayers without performing better work. This year, AFSCME strongly advocated for legislation to protect our local government  employees from these harmful practices. 

When county agencies pay large amounts of public funds to contract with private agencies, they risk the possibility of corruption and degraded services. As this happens, counties become locked into expensive contracts, they ignore competitive bidding and contractors fail to deliver quality services at the expense of taxpayer dollars. Investigations have discovered, for example, local governments accepting bribes for service contracts and private companies misleading the public to maximize profits. If a county decides its services are better delivered by a private contractor, that decision must be made with clear evidence that it is best for the public good. AFSCME California and partnering labor organizations worked with Assemblymember Jones-Sawyer to introduce AB 1250 to ensure that counties adhere to due diligence standards when opting to outsource public services. AB 1250 would allow counties to outsource their services if certain government standards are met, such as proven savings for taxpayers, disclosures on the part of the contractor and no displacement of employees. Clear management standards, fair contracting practices and transparency requirements written into AB 1250 are essential to avoid delivering a combination of costly bills and lower quality services to taxpayers. Despite not making it through the legislature this year, AB 1250 highlighted significant issues impacting our membership at the local levels. AB 1250 is currently in the Senate Rules Committee.