One of the biggest labor unions representing workers at the Tennessee Valley Authority claims the federal utility is violating its own contracting guidelines and potentially weakening its cybersecurity by laying off TVA computer software specialists in Chattanooga and turning the work over to a French-based contractor.
In a letter to TVA, the president of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, Paul Shearon, said the move to outsource IT work in Chattanooga and phase out 120 TVA jobs “flies in the face of TVA’s mission” to promote economic growth in the Valley.
Shearon said TVA signed a $15 million contract last September with Capgemini, a global company based in Paris that has 100,000 workers in India, to write new software for TVA prior to working with the union under the “Contract Decision Model” to consider different developer and program options.
“We want to make it clear that our members are more than capable of doing this work and doing it well,” Shearon said in a letter to TVA Chairman James “Skip” Thompson. “TVA did not provide our members with the information needed to evaluate the outsourcing of these jobs and they did not identify a single penny of savings to TVA ratepayers.”
TVA announced last month that it is moving to outsource about 20% of the jobs in its information technology office to help improve efficiency by using contract specialists that develop such software for multiple utilities.