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While the federal government has sought to limit the number of full-time employees on the national payroll, it has millions of workers under private contract. These workers, mostly performing service work in support of the U.S. Defense Department, are the focus of a new IBEW organizing campaign in California, Washington, New Mexico, Maryland and Washington, D.C.

The first success under the new push came November 30 for a unit of 32 workers at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Employed by Indyne, the workers support and maintain communications systems at the base coordinating the militarys space and missile launch activities on the West Coast.

Santa Barbara Local 413 organizer Tim Bennett said he had been in contact with workers at the unit for more than a year. But it was not until those workers heard about the benefits he helped win in October contract talks for another IBEW unit on the base that they signed authorization cards and called for a National Labor Relations Board election. Once job classifications and wages are set, the newly organized unit will be added to that labor contract, Bennett said.

Medical insurance and other benefits were a huge incentive to workers mulling whether to opt for union representation. "Some of the guys were paying $2,000 to $3,000 a year in health care premiums," Bennett said. "This will save them a lot of money." The workers will also see improvements to their retirement and vacation packages.

The companys efforts to dissuade workers from organizing were half-hearted. A captive audience meeting succeeded only in pushing two workers over to the unions side, Bennett said. Indyne may well be aware of one management benefit of an organized work force: well-compensated and decently-treated workers make for a more stable workplace, said IBEW Membership Development International Representative Alan Freeman. The lopsided vote was 19-8. Local 413 organizer Joe Furino and Ninth District International Representative Brian Ahakuelo also helped on the campaign.

Similar to the Davis-Bacon Act, which sets prevailing wage rates in the construction industry, the Service Contract Act was passed in 1965 to ensure the federal government pays community wage scales and benefits. The federal governments ongoing efforts to privatize its functions has provided unions an increasing number of targets under the Service Contract Act. In 2004, the Bush administration announced plans to move 850,000 federal jobs to the private sector.

The widespread privatization of federal jobs is a real threat to unionized ranks. The Economic Policy Institute has reported: "Even the federal government jobs at the low end of the pay scale have historically paid better and have had more generous benefits than comparable private-sector jobs." As contractors replace more federal employees, there will inevitably be more downward pressure on wages and benefits of union members.

At the Department of Defense, this downward pressure could be intensified by legislation proposed by the Bush administration to gut the current personnel system that governs workers pay, salary increases, hiring, firing, job classifications and many other federal workplace rules.

Outsourcing is not going away. Neither are attempts to weaken worker protections in the public sector. Unionized federal workers can defend their standard of living only by supporting and strengthening the effort to organize the work force of private employers. That is the only way to stop the long-term trend of exploiting them as a cheap labor alternative. The IBEW is doing that in key areas across the nation.