FederalDaily - January 31, 2006
Defense Sells to Foreign Entities
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has found that for each of the
years 2000 through 2004, the U.S. “sold significantly more defense articles
and services to foreign entities than it bought from them.” During that
time frame, defense exports averaged $11.5 billion a year, versus imports of
$1.8 billion a year. Department of Defense (DoD) military sales averaged $12.6
billion a year, versus purchases of $1.5 billion a year, GAO said. During the
same time period, DoD purchases of defense articles and services from foreign
countries have decreased from 2.4 percent to 1.7 percent of all such DoD purchases.
GAO gathered its data from DoD and the Departments of Commerce, Homeland Security
and State.
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CBP to Rerun 2005 Awards
Customs and Border Protection (CBP) changed its employee award process in
2005, after eight years of using joint labor-management committees at the local
level to make award recommendations. For 2005, CBP suspended the committees,
saying instead that the agency would implement an awards policy for all employees.
The National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) opposed the change, and the issue
went before arbitration. NTEU announced this week that an arbitrator has ordered
CBP to reinstate the previous awards process, which was spelled out in the
NTEU-CBP contract. The arbitrator also ordered CBP to rerun its employee awards
process for 2005. NTEU said the decision could mean additional millions of
dollars in awards for CBP employees.
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Forest Service Union Opposes
Outsourcing
The National Federation of Federal Employees (NFFE) announced that it has
received news from the Forest Service that the agency plans to open 15,000
additional full-time equivalent employees (FTEs) up to A-76 privatization studies
by fiscal year 2009. NFFE said this plan is in new revisions in the agency’s
Competitive Sourcing Green Plan. “The Forest Service has neither the
resources nor the capability to study 15,000 jobs by 2009,” said NFFE
Forest Service Council President Bill Dougan. “Studying this many positions
would cost hundreds of millions of dollars,” he added. Forest Service
employees are also displeased with agency representatives for being left out
of the process to develop the revised Green Plan, according to NFFE.
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Army Divorce Rate Down
The Army announced a dip in its divorce rates. Divorce rates among Army officers
dropped 61 percent last year following a 2004 spike. In 2004, 3,325 Army officers
divorced, but that number dropped to 1,292 in 2005, Army officials said. In
terms of percentages, that means in 2004, 6 percent of married officers divorced;
in 2005, 2.3 percent of married officers divorced. Divorces also were down
slightly among enlisted members, from 7,152 in 2004 to 7,075 last year. Army
Chaplain (Lt. Col.) Pete Frederich, family ministries officer for the Army
Chief of Chaplains, said there is no concrete explanation for why divorce rates
climbed in 2004 or why they dropped last year.
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