I work in a depot, I'm a civilian .gov employee and retired military. I am not part of the union although there is one and most non-vets are members of the union. I currently work in a partnership program on the F-22. Al I'll say about that is, contractors aren't always the most efficient way of doing a job either. When it comes to the depot as a whole, for every new workload that comes in we had to bid on the work and prove we are better, faster, cheaper than outsourcing. We also have to compete against the other Air Force depots for work. A lot of the lazy, inefficient, dead wood type employees have been here over 30 years and have never held another job. Alot of them are headed out the door now with early retirements or separation money due to draw downs. I have been on the receiveing end of contractor support and don't believe it's worth the trouble because of extra documentation and the way the service contract system is set up. All contracts are one year contracts with up to four options to renew. It's almost guaranteed that when the time comes to rebid in 5 years a different company wil get the contract. Sure a lot of times the employes just roll over to the new contractor. It's usually with a pay cut or reduction in benefits though. At this poiint the employees are just happy to have a job so they take it, but that doesn't they are happy or willing to work as hard as they did before. No matter who does the work or supplies the service someone will claim they can do it better and lobby for to change tehway it's done. One advantage to keeping the depots is that we aren't going anywhere unless the .gov shuts us down. Contractors can fail at any time.