TSEA: Don’t give up on state employees

TSEA March 22, 2016 Comments Off on TSEA: Don’t give up on state employees
TSEA: Don’t give up on state employees

Earlier today, TSEA testified before the Senate State and Local Government committee in response to the Haslam administration’s business justification report on their Facilities Management Outsourcing plan.

TSEA’s primary message was clear: don’t give up on state employees!

While we applaud the work by the administration to locate areas where we can realize $30+ million dollars in cost savings, we do not agree that realizing this cost savings requires outsourcing the facilities management at all of our state buildings. TSEA believes this is a small, easily-correctable issue which deserves a small solution.

We believe a more conservative, common-sense solution would be to simply leverage our $30+ billion enterprise to negotiate better pricing on goods and services, cross-train our current employees, and let state employees continue the great work they are doing.

To view the video of today’s testimony, click here.
(Note: the TSEA portion begins at approximately 1:26:00.)

To view TSEA’s power point presentation from today, click here.

This is the second time TSEA has been invited to address the committee concerning this issue.

The Haslam administration on March 8 presented to the Senate State and Local Government committee the business justification report for their Facilities Management Outsourcing (FMO) plan. The administration claims their FMO plan will save $35.8 million per year without eliminating any jobs or benefits. The majority of their projected cost savings, according to the administration, will come from “self-performance” and “volume discounts.”

The Director of Haslam’s Consumer Focused Government Terry Cowles as reported by the Commercial Appeal told lawmakers and reporters after the hearing the numbers only are “projected potential. This is not definitive and it won’t be definitive until we receive proposals [bids from private contractors], at which point we have actual numbers to work with.”

Please be sure to monitor the TSEA website and your email inbox for updates about this very important issue.