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Washington -- With thousands of jobs lost or slated to be lost at Avondale shipyards, the U.S. Postal Service and the Michoud Assembly Facility, Louisiana officials are working to protect one of the region's biggest remaining government employers, the National Finance Center in eastern New Orleans. In each of the past five years, Louisiana congressional members have inserted language into spending bills for the Department of Agriculture, which oversees the Finance Center, barring cutbacks there without advance notice and permission from the House and Senate Appropriations Committees. The center provides human resources, payroll and administrative services for federal agencies.

The congressional mandates were prompted by the temporary reassignment of the center's federal payroll operations after Hurricane Katrina and fears that other cities would use the disaster to snare the facility and its 1,200-plus jobs.

For now, center officials say, the facility, which provides biweekly paychecks to 655,000 employees at more than 170 federal agencies, is secure.

"The center is well-positioned for the long term," Finance Center Director John White said. He said the center is continuing to "grow its ancillary payroll services" and its human resources work for the federal government.

The center currently employs 835 people at its New Orleans facility, plus another 381 who work for related Agriculture Department divisions. The 1,216-worker payroll is down about 10 percent since Hurricane Katrina.

After Katrina, the center lost the administration of the federal government's thrift savings plan, but few people lost their jobs, mainly as a result of attrition as workers retired or relocated after the hurricane destroyed so many homes and facilities.

Perhaps because the center does little to court publicity and its mission of payroll management isn't all that sexy, its public profile has been much lower than the Michoud Assembly Plant, which for 37 years built external fuel tanks for the recently ended NASA shuttle missions and has, as a result, lost hundreds of jobs. It also is not as well as known as the Avondale shipyards, which built massive LPD amphibious transport boats for the Navy and is slated to close next year as its owner, Huntington Ingalls Shipyards, consolidates ship production in Mississippi.

"We don't hear much about the Finance Center, and maybe that's a good thing," said Michael Hecht, CEO of Greater New Orleans Inc. Often when a facility is in the news, Hecht said, it's not good news, such as the New Orleans mail-processing facility falling on the U.S. Postal Service's closure list, which could cost the city more than 800 jobs.

Hecht said the Finance Center is critical to the economic future of eastern New Orleans and government and business leaders will continue to work hard to keep it operating at full strength.

White, the Finance Center director, recognizes the center's importance to the local economy. Pay for workers at the center ranges from about $25,000 for its GS-4 federal employees to $165,000 for senior executive service workers.

"The National Finance Center is a critical institution, not only for the federal government, but as an employer in New Orleans," White said. "The staff and leadership of the NFC are intent on managing back-office functions in an efficient and effective manner on behalf of its client agencies."

Like most employees, federal workers are paid almost entirely through direct deposit to their checking or savings accounts. That has cut costs because those functions can be done through automation, but it hasn't resulted in big job losses.

White said that's because, for the past seven years, the center has taken charge of many federal government's human resources functions.

In addition, the agency is partnering with the Department of Human Services to execute some requirements of the Obama administration's health-overhaul legislation -- though that work could be jeopardized if the law is overturned and the program is rolled back.

The most recent audit of the agency by the inspector general for the Agriculture Department and other officials at the facility concluded that the center had implemented sufficient controls to ensure that paychecks go out without error. But it was written with the kind of bureaucratic language that meant the report would not make any headlines.

The center's system of controls "are suitably designed and operating with sufficient effectiveness to provide reasonable assurance that associated control objectives would be achieved if customer agencies and subservice organizations applied the controls contemplated," the inspector general's report concluded.

Bruce Alpert can be reached at balpert@timespicayune.com or 202.450.1406.