CWA Vigilance Brings Down Texas Privatization Scheme

In a major victory for CWA public workers and social service recipients in Texas, the state is taking back a large share of the Health and Human Services work it had contracted to a private company in 2005.

Members of the Texas State Employees Union-CWA Local 6186 put enormous pressure on state officials and lawmakers as the union campaigned against the scheme, which was gradually replacing walk-in state offices with call centers staffed by a non-union contractor.

In the process, according to the union and media reports, thousands of program recipients were dropped from the rolls for Medicaid, food stamps, Children's Health Insurance and other state-managed assistance plans. Applicants complained that their documents were lost and mishandled. And there were none of the savings promised by the private employer, Accenture, a Bermuda-based company that won an $899 million contract to run the call centers.

"We're excited, really excited," said TSEU-CWA President Judy Lugo. "We fought hard. This has been my whole life for a long time. We wrote letters, we made phone calls, we went to every meeting, every hearing. We'd go around to our members and tell them, 'Don't give up. We're going to win this.'"

Many employees, even some with as much as 18 years seniority, were getting e-mails telling them their jobs were going to be cut. Some moved on to other agencies, and others were laid off, Lugo said. Now the DHS commissioner is promising that no more jobs will be lost and that 900 temporary workers will be made permanent.

Accenture will continue some of its contract work through 2008, but its employees will largely be confined to data entry jobs, leaving experienced state workers to once again determine clients' eligibility for aid.

The news media also is paying attention. A Houston Chronicle editorial called the scheme an "expensive blunder" and said the lesson "is that some state services, particularly those that provide a social safety net for the most vulnerable of Texans, should not be contracted out to companies more interested in amassing profits than serving needy citizens."