WP: Bush's 'Competitive Sourcing' Worries Disabled Workers

[Pirate Smile]

Bush's 'Competitive Sourcing' Worries Disabled Workers
Initiative May Put Employees With Special Needs At a Decided Disadvantage, Their Advocates Say

By Christopher Lee
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, April 18, 2005; Page A15

David Goodman, a clerk at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, is caught between two conflicting federal policies, one that helped him get his federal job 14 years ago and another that soon may take it away.

Goodman, 34, has autism, a developmental disability that affects the brain and impairs a person's social skills and reasoning. He landed his job in NIH's Occupational Health and Safety Division in 1991 as a "Schedule A" appointee, the beneficiary of long-standing government policies that promote the employment of people with disabilities in federal agencies.

"It's a nice job. I like the people that work there. They are nice to me," said Goodman, who works from 8 a.m. to 4:15 p.m. every weekday and lives independently in an apartment in Rockville.

Last month, his family learned that Goodman is among tens of thousands of federal employees, the vast majority of them not disabled, whose agencies are evaluating whether their jobs could be performed better and more cheaply by a private contractor. It is all part of President Bush's "competitive sourcing" initiative, which requires civil servants across the government to prove they can do their work more efficiently than private contractors, or risk seeing the work outsourced.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61079-20...