Internal processes are used to coordinate employee efforts to fight whatever type of privatization management chooses. External strategies are those used by the employees to involve concerned people that are not employees. These people can be management, outside groups, media or other governmental officials.

Getting Organized

Put a Group of Members Together. The first order of business is to put together a core-group of employees that have a strong desire to stop the privatization effort. It is important to have committed people because these fights are often very long and will include a fair amount of work. These individuals should:

1. Have knowledge about the service being privatized.
2. Be able to provide detailed information about the service including but not limited to the skills necessary to provide the service and the levels at which the service is currently being provided.
3. Be comfortable analyzing documents provided by the contractor and other members of the group.
4. Have good relations with management.

It is very likely that PEF members will have knowledge of management’s privatization efforts. Even if these PEF members are not included in the core-group, every effort should be made to gather information from them. Internal PEF publications, such as a division newsletter, can be very effective in not only alerting more members to the privatization threat but also assisting in information gathering. This is especially true with "shadow agencies." PEF members are often working side-by-side with "shadow agency" employees. They should be able to provide the core-group with good information about what the "shadow agency" employees do and what their backgrounds are.

Once the core-group is formed everyone should be given a clear idea of what is expected of him or her and what he or she can expect from others. For example, the group could develop an action plan. The next task is to begin gathering information.

Meet with Management. There are three very important pieces of information that can only be gathered from a meeting with management. These are:

1. Whose idea was it to privatize?
2. What are the expected costs of the privatization?
3. What are the exact expectations of the contractor?

The meeting can be a local Labor/Management (L/M) meeting, an agency level L/M meeting or a meeting for the express purpose of identifying this information. The type of meeting is up to the group and the PEF leadership at your agency/division.

It is important to know why management is contracting out because this will determine your external strategies. If it is an internal decision based on internal information then the fight can be conducted entirely within the agency. If, on the other hand, agency management is being told to contract out for the service by a political leader then the fight will definitely be fought outside of your agency. Not surprisingly, the General Accounting Office concluded in an April 1998 report that the primary ingredient necessary for successful privatization is that "a political leader must champion the privatization."

To determine the quality and the cost of the contractor in order to successfully fight the privatization effort you will need to know the following information:

1. To find out management’s expectations of the contractor and the costs of the contract so you can fashion your cost and quality of services arguments.
2. What level and scope of services the contractor will be providing so you can compare the expectations to what is provided now.
3. How the contract compare with current costs.

No matter where on the spectrum of privatization your agency’s effort is, management can be an excellent source of information. If the privatization effort is in the very early stages management may be the only source for information. The amount of information management has on what the contractor will be doing will depend on where management is in the process of contracting out. Whether they are willing to share this information may be another story. You may have to submit a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request for the information. If so, the process becomes much more difficult and arduous.

If the privatization threat is coming from a "shadow agency" your agency management should have a great deal of information about the "shadow agency." This is because for many "shadow agencies" state managers are also involved in the "shadow agency."

Get the Request for Proposal (RFP). If the agency has already issued an RFP then your agency level L/M chair will have already been notified by PEF central about the RFP. All notices of RFPs are published in the New York State Contract Reporter. PEF staff reviews this publication and pertinent copies of the notice are sent to agency L/M chairs. If you are aware of an RFP you should ask management for a copy.

If an RFP has not been issued you may be able to get a draft RFP, in any event you should get as much information about what will be in the RFP as possible. You should learn as much about what services are being privatized and why the agency is privatizing those services as you can.

Whether or not there is an RFP you should request, in writing, from management any information they used to make the decision to privatize. They may or may not be willing to share this information. If they do not respond this lack of response can be used in other strategies.

Get the Contract. If there is already a contract then this information is much easier to access. You can FOIL your agency or the Comptroller’s office for copies of the contract.

Research the Contractor. Many contractors have experiences in other states. If the contractor has had problems this is very valuable information. Even if the problems were caused by a different contractor, if they were delivering the same type of service this is information that can be useful in fighting privatization. New York City has a registry that provides information on contractor performance in the City. The internationals are also a good source on contractor performance in other states.

Get Armed

Once you have put your core-group together and have gathered all of the information, it is time to put the information to use. The two arguments that are most persuasive in fighting privatization are cost and quality. You must now do your analysis to find out if the contractor is in fact cheaper and if so at what cost to quality.

Cost Analysis. This may be the most important analysis that you do so be very careful. A cost analysis compares the private sector providers costs with the current public sector costs. Where no contract exists, it is often difficult to prepare a cost analysis. Sometimes management has prepared an internal cost analysis that can be critiqued. Other times they simply have a dollar amount in mind that they expect the contract to cost. No matter what the case you need to determine the current costs of providing the service.

When calculating your costs for doing the work, be sure to include all costs associated with your work including: fringe benefit costs, equipment, and any indirect costs. Management may be a good source for some of these indirect costs.

Having a contract or reliable numbers on the contractor’s costs is only the beginning of your analysis. There are many other costs of contracting out that are not included in the contract. For example, costs for monitoring the contract are often excluded or sometimes the state will pay for space or other indirect costs of the contractor. In the case of "shadow agencies," oftentimes they will have duplicative structures such as a Personnel Office or other administrative offices. The cost of these duplicative structures can be used to show that the "shadow agency" is more costly. It is very important to identify these costs. Anything that drives up the cost of the contract improves our arguments against the privatization.

Quality of Services. If your management is in the very early stages of the privatization there may not even be an RFP. If this is the case then the only source for information about management’s expectations of level and scope of services will be management. Be sure to make a written request of all information.

If there is an RFP you need to compare the services management is requesting the bidder to provide with those already being provided. You need to look specifically at the scope of the services and, if possible, the qualifications that are required to provide those services. As has been said in an earlier section, one way contractors cut costs is to "de-skill" jobs. That means that they deliver the service with an individual that does not have the same knowledge, skills and abilities as the public employee currently doing the job.

If there is a contract, then you need to identify the people hired by the contractor. Find out what their qualifications are and what jobs they are doing. Also, identify who is overseeing the contractor’s performance and obtain copies of any reports generated. If the contractor is not being monitored, then no one knows what the contractor is doing and no one knows anything about the level or quality of services being provided by the contractor. This lack of knowledge will be a concern to some people.

Produce Materials. Once you have completed your information gathering and analysis you need to put your findings in a format that best provides the information to the people you are trying to persuade. These can include: research reports, union critiques of privatization, fact sheets for the press and the public, press releases, white papers, legislative testimony, letters-to-the-editor, and op-ed pieces.

The strategies you choose and how they are used will depend on what you learned from the information you gathered above. If it is a possibility, using the Labor/Management process to fight the privatization is the best strategy. Failing this, the fight must be brought to the "outside" world, e.g., the legislature, other interested parties and the public. Of course, this all assumes that you have determined that the contract is either more costly and/or does not provide the same level and/or quality of services as are currently provided.

Labor/Management Meeting

How you use the Labor/Management process will depend on who is responsible for the decision to privatize. If it is a management decision then the L/M process can be very effective and you may not need to use any other strategies. If someone external to the agency, e.g., the Governor, made the decision, then the Labor/Management process may have limited effect.

Decision of Management. If, during your information gathering it becomes clear that your agency management is primarily responsible for making the decision to privatize, then you may be able to win the fight without having to go outside of your agency. You must also recognize that management may be more adversarial since they may not want to admit making a bad decision.

If you have enough information and have prepared your cost analyses and/or your quality of service analyses, then this meeting should be used to debate the merits of the decision to privatize.

You may have the opportunity to suggest alternatives to privatization. The following are some likely targets for cost savings: non-competitive purchasing policies, slow or inadequate revenue collection and enforcement, failure to implement new technology in a timely fashion, failure to adopt new techniques and top heavy management.

Political

Often, agency management is either unwilling or unable to stop privatizing a service. If this is the case then the fight will be won or lost in the political arena. In order to be successful in this arena a persuasive argument is usually not enough. You must either be able to bring enough of your own political pressure to bear or be able to bring other people with you into the fight.

Obviously, changing the mind of the Governor is going to be the quickest fix. The Governor has the power to end a privatization initiative with a phone call. Unfortunately, he can begin one just as easily. The direct political pressure strategy is most effective in this forum because it is more of a one-to-one relationship.

The legislature should be approached on three levels: (1) the legislative leadership; (2) legislative staff; and, (3) individual members. Meetings with the leaders of the two houses can be very effective in blocking privatization initiatives. Since these efforts are usually funded through the budget, opposition by one or the other leaders can be enough to stop the privatization. The second level is to meet with the committee staff associated with the agency. If the committee staff are convinced that the privatization is a bad idea they are capable of convincing their legislators to stop the privatization. Quality arguments work best with the committee staff and cost arguments work best with the fiscal committees. Finally, affected members should lobby their legislators in the district offices. This lobbying should include the overall arguments about cost and quality and also the local impact of the loss of the jobs to the legislators constituents.

If the Governor and/or the legislature are not convinced based on the merits of the case directly, the case must be brought to the public. This could be done on two fronts. One is building coalitions with other interested groups and the other is using the media to shape public opinion.

Coalitions

Who you approach to join you in the fight against a privatization effort will depend on what you found in your research and what the services are that are being privatized.

If the service is one that is provided directly to the public there may be client groups or other groups of interested citizens. Quality arguments are very persuasive to these audiences.

If the service is not provided to a specific group of people then perhaps you can reach out to "good government" groups to form a coalition. These groups tend to be interested in issues like, liability, accountability and responsibility in government. They may be more persuaded by cost arguments and issues like lack of monitoring. Some examples of these groups are; other state unions, client advocacy groups, taxpayer groups, and even local people that are opposed to the initiative. When the Correction Corporation of America started to make noise about building a prison in Orange County some of the people from the area spoke out against the prison. PEF and other unions reached out to these people to work together to fight the initiative.

Media

In order to bring broader based pressure to bear on legislators and the Governor, you should develop a campaign for the media. When doing this you should emphasize arguments that are not self-serving. This is why we have emphasized the quality and cost arguments. You should use the free media whenever possible. This includes, letters-to-the-editor, radio call-in shows and guest editorials to name a few.