ITAA vs. AFGE

Date: Sunday, May 12, 2002 6:14 PM

*** H-1B NEWSLETTER ***

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The Truthfulness, Responsibility, and Accountability in Contracting Act (TRAC H.R. 721) was introduced on February 14, 2001. This bill would make it much more difficult for government agencies to outsource their work.

The government has used outside contractors to do work for quite awhile. As an example, KPMG is routinely used to update their accounting systems for H-1B visas (http://www.ins.usdoj.gov/graphics/publicaffairs/statements/H1BState.htm ). An LCA database search (www.ZaZona.com/LCA-Data) reveals that KPMG is loaded with H-1Bs. My online database has 3357 LCAs, many of them for as many as 100 H-1Bs each. This "fox watching the hen house" story is going on in all branches of the government and they can hire unlimited numbers of them since they are exempted from the yearly limit of 195,000 per year.

For another example see my 4/17/2002 article to see how BRI outbid ACS for a Charleston County IT contract.

When I saw a webpage where Olga Grkavac of the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA) was complaining about TRAC (http://www.gcn.com/vol19_no1/news/1126-1.html) I got very suspicious that Harris Miller (president of ITAA) was up to something.

Harris Miller opposes TRAC because he understands how important H-1Bs are for huge bodyshops like KPMG, TATA, and BRI. These companies use the cheap labor advantage of H-1Bs to undercut the salaries of government employees. Government agencies can argue that they are saving taxpayers money by firing tax paying government employees. They can usually outbid companies that employ higher percentages of American workers so they are very successful at winning outsourcing contracts. TRAC would adversely affect these companies and Harris Miller is rising to their defense.

There may be one other reason Miller thinks our government should hire H-1Bs - union busting. The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) definitely understands that TRAC is in their interest (http://www.afge.org/Index.cfm?Page=TRACAct) Unfortunately most of their pages like "Why we need TRAC" are only available to members. I can't understand why they want to keep this fight top secret because Harris Miller has no such problems.

>>> I will send this newsletter to that union in the hope that they will wise up and publicize what's going on here. Keeping this secret from the public isn't going to help their cause.

http://www.itaa.org/news/view/ViewPoint.cfm?ID=19 by Harris Miller

Procurement - In 2001, ITAA fought against the TRAC (Truth, Responsibility and Accountability in Contracting) Act, H.R. 721 and S. 1152, because of the unrealistic requirements it placed on federal contractors and its ban on all future outsourcing. There were also several amendments offered following the TRAC model that ITAA worked to defeat. We face the same battles over TRAC and TRAC-like amendments this year, and will continue to work to defeat this misguided piece of legislation.

ITAA anticipates new legislation to be introduced by Congressman Tom Davis (R-VA), the SARA (Services Acquisition Reform Act of 2002), containing many provisions of interest to the IT industry. The SARA would be the first attempt at Acquisition reform since Clinger-Cohen was adopted in 1996. Specific provisions in the proposed bill are IT exemption to Buy America, Share in Savings, cooperative purchasing, change in conflict of interest requirements, telecommuting changes for vendors, and several others. We anticipate working hard to support SARA in 2002.

http://www.itaa.org/govt/pubs/pprtext.cfm?ID=77 by Olga Grkavac Opposition by federal government unions to agency efforts to outsource work to the private sector thwart technology advances. The addition of more reporting requirements and paperwork to the A-76 process has made the federal market less appealing to leading edge commercial companies;

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