Contracted employees working within the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Bureau for Global Health have begun the process of forming a union.
The labor organizing effort includes staff on the Global Health Training, Advisory, and Support Contract — or GHTASC — who make up roughly 60% of USAID’s global health bureau workforce of more than 700. These “institutional support contractors” — or ISCs — are employed by private companies, but work alongside and perform many of the same functions as U.S. government employees. This appears to be the first time institutional contractors at USAID have sought to unionize.
In 2022, as they were transitioning to GHTASC from a previous contract, many of these contractors complained about poor transparency and inferior benefits. As Devex reported at the time, several of them organized a coordinated sick-out in protest of the situation, leading to a confrontation with the agency’s human resources department.