Big Wins on NDAA Amendments
Because of your outreach to House members and their staffs, AFGE scored some major victories as the House considered amendments to the National Defense Authorization Act (HR 1735) during a floor vote in May:
AFGE OPPOSED AMENDMENTS
Calvert Amendment #331 to cut civilian workforce by 15%.
Floor Action: Not allowed to be offered
Gosar Amendment #95 to contract all functions unless necessary for national security.
Floor Action: Not allowed to be offered
Smith Amendment #62 to mandate a BRAC in 2017.
Floor Action: Not allowed to be offered
Coffman Amendment #115 to cut headquarters by 20%.
Floor Action: Not allowed to be offered
AFGE SUPPORTED AMENDMENTS
Cole Amendment #229 to ensure DoD facilities are consulted on intellectual property rights.
Floor Action: Passed
Kilmer Amendment #176 to prevent transfers of workload and require Congressional notifications for any furlough of working capital fund employees.
Floor Action: Passed
Scott Amendment #166 to ensure commercial item definition is consistent with CORE.
Floor Action: Passed
Bishop Amendment #190 to restore a crucial manpower report requirement.
Floor Action: Not offered, but will be revisited during House-Senate NDAA conference
OTHER WINS DURING COMMITTEE ACTION
Even before the floor vote, AFGE won some significant victories during consideration of the bill by the House Armed Services Committee. The AFGE-backed measures that were adopted would:
- Reverse travel per diem cuts and prevent the Defense Department from passing lodging and dining costs onto DoD civilians. (Takai amendment – originally a bill introduced in March by Rep. Derek Kilmer of Washington)
- Prevent the resurrection of NSPS. (Bordallo amendment – See how your member of Congress voted here)
- Extend a cap on service contract spending. (Takai amendment, co-sponsored by Bishop)
- Give DoD civilians opportunities to perform new work they wouldn’t otherwise get because of the cap on the size of the civilian workforce. (O’Rourke amendment).
- Prevent arbitrary conversions of civilian jobs to military. (Bordallo amendment, co-sponsored by Bishop)
- Exempt working capital fund employees, who are paid through reimbursements for the services they provide, from non-disciplinary furloughs as long as funds are available. (Rogers amendment)
- Exclude working capital funds employees from arbitrary 20% cuts in headquarters personnel. (Bishop amendment)
- Fix the commercial item definition so that workload can be declared as core workload for the depots. (Scott amendment)
- Require DoD to review items purchased overseas to see if any could be manufactured in the arsenals or fabricated in the depots, bringing additional work to civilian employees. (Duckworth amendment)
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