Federal food court and janitorial workers in DC strike

This is rather shocking as it is a "do as I say; not as I do", event from the royal Versailles on the Potomac.

Many federal places (up to at least 2008) were forced to use a program called A-76. For those that do not know what A-76 is, this page from Goodfellow AFB kind of explains it.

As a federal worker in a service organisation that is a non-deployable slot (civilian or military), the job you do is setup for a competition. Your shop puts in a bid as part of the competition and you compete with (usually a small business) off base. The goal is to see who can do the work more cost effectively.

Sometimes I have seen existing in-house, military organisations win against small businesses. Usually the off-site business and to beat you by 10 percent in order to take your shop's jobs.

For example, things like cutting grass; trash pickup, and other kinds of support work that happens at any DOD base or post don't need a federal worker or soldier, sailor, marine or airman doing them.

Many years ago, I went to an A-76 training course. One of the exercises was to try and beat the base garbage collection shop of federal workers.

It wasn't difficult after you examined the needed tasks and resourcing.

The scenario for federal workers was fat. They had big garbage trucks and service trucks; office space of all kinds; full time workers. Too many workers.

By the time we finished the scenario, the base garbage pick up was done by an off-site contractor with only an office for the dispatcher and secretary. The supervisor drove around in a pickup truck and that WAS his/her office with a cell-phone and to-do lists. The supervisor would check up on work and do face-to-face customer service as needed.

The garbage truck drivers were part-time. The newer-tech garbage trucks were the arm-grab kind and matching garbage bins. It was a real chainsaw paradigm shift.

So the original article above shows federal union workers performing jobs that should be done by a private business. There is no need for our tax dollars to fund such largess.

But I guess there are two kinds of rules in the Federal Government: one for the peasants and one for the royalty.