Stop One ATS!

What's Happening

“One ATS” (OATS) is a Citywide plan to consolidate more than 1,000 IT employees into Austin Technology Services (ATS), the City's central IT department, by May 1. This rushed restructuring will uproot talented workers from departments where their specialized knowledge and experience are needed most.

Why This Matters

OATS will reduce the quality of the City's work, threaten livelihoods, jeopardize services, and put Austin at great risk. While their job titles may be similar, workers in IT positions perform an incredibly diverse range of specific, mission-critical tasks:

• ⚡ Austin Energy coordination with ERCOT
• 🚦 Traffic signaling and emergency traffic controls
• ✈️ Air traffic communications
• 🚓 GPS guidance for first responders
• 🏥 Protection of private health records and Personally Identifiable Information
• 🛠️ Development and improvement of department-specific tools and applications

These systems and the knowledge to operate them are not interchangeable. Consolidation will degrade critical emergency and infrastructure operations, destabilize essential services that Austinites rely on, and cost time and money that has not been accounted for.

Don't Dallas Our Austin

City Manager T.C. Broadnax and his top executives already know how “moving fast and breaking things” puts public services, safety, and data in danger. While Broadnax was serving as their City Manager, the City of Dallas:

• 👮 Lost millions of police files, including criminal case evidence, in 2021
• ⏳ Endured outages and delays for fire, water, 311, courts, and libraries following a ransomware attack in 2023
• 🪪 Exposed more than 30,000 Dallasites' sensitive private data

We're Fighting Back

We are demanding that City Manager T.C. Broadnax:

• 🛑 Notify all City employees that he will stop OATS and halt transfers or reclassifications tied to OATS, effective immediately.
• 👂 Engage the workforce to identify improvements and innovations that do not rely on risky consolidation proposals.
• 💰 Pause over $10,000,000 in continued spending on consultants and contracts related to OATS.

We Make Austin Happen

The American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees Local 1624 is the union for City of Austin and Travis County employees. Since 1969, our local has been fighting for fair wages, safer working conditions, and respect on the job. At over 4,800 members, we don't just serve the public - we are the public. Together, we win dignity and power for the workers and people of Austin and Travis County.