Every year, the federal government awards private firms billions of dollars in federal contracts. The contracts are supposed to go to “responsible” companies, but that isn’t always the case. According to the Government Accountability Office, between 2005 and 2009, the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division issued 25 of its 50 largest fines against 20 federal contractors who later received over $9 billion in contracts in 2009. Over the same period, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration issued 8 of its top 50 fines against 7 federal contractors who went on to receive almost $180 million in contracts in 2009.
In an effort to improve the contracting process, on July 31, 2014, President Barack Obama issued Executive Order (E.O.) 13673 on “Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces.” Earlier this year, on May 28, the Department of Labor published its proposed guidance on implementing the E.O. in the Federal Register and opened the docket for public comments. And over the past few weeks, I’ve worked with allies from George Washington University, Nebraska Appleseed, Oxfam America, and the Southern Poverty Law Center to prepare comments and recommendations on the guidance for the Labor Department.
The E.O. seeks to improve the federal contracting process by requiring federal contractors and subcontractors to disclose violations of 14 federal labor laws and their equivalent state laws from the previous three years and then provide semi-annual updates. The order also enhances paycheck transparency by requiring contractors and subcontractors to provide workers with information about how their wages are calculated and to notify workers if they’re classified as “independent contractors” rather than employees.
Our comments express support for these new requirements; however, we also offer the Labor Department several recommendations that would strengthen the guidance and go much further toward stopping the flow of federal dollars to companies that flout our nation’s labor laws.
The guidance could take a tougher stance against awarding contracts to firms with violations involving a worker’s death or serious injury (an amputation or other permanent disability, for example) over the past three years. These types of egregious violations should be disqualifying, and federal contracting officers should be instructed that firms with a history of such violations should be excluded from the bidding process. If such a firm is already performing on a contract, the contracting officer should terminate the contract or refer the firm to the agency’s suspension and debarment official. As our letter states, “In no instance should the federal contractor be permitted to perform on an existing contract or be awarded a new contract while the underlying conduct that constituted the violations remains unabated.”
Among other recommendations, our comments urge the Labor Department to require disclosure of meritorious whistleblower complaints, to verify information reported by contractors, to explicitly state the sanction for false reporting of violations, and to elaborate on the public’s role in monitoring federal contractors’ compliance with labor laws. We believe our recommendations would better serve the E.O.’s objectives, which are: to achieve more efficient contract performance, to assist contractors with complying with labor laws, and to level the playing field for companies that wish to do right by their workers.
Click here to read the complete letter.
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Katie Tracy | September 1, 2015
Every year, the federal government awards private firms billions of dollars in federal contracts. The contracts are supposed to go to “responsible” companies, but that isn’t always the case. According to the Government Accountability Office, between 2005 and 2009, the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division issued 25 of its 50 largest fines against 20 […]
Dave Owen | August 28, 2015
Earlier today, a federal district court judge in North Dakota enjoined implementation of the new Clean Water Rule (also known as the Waters of the United States rule). And if ever there was a judicial opinion begging for prompt reversal, this is it. EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers put years of effort into that rule, […]
David Driesen | August 28, 2015
CPR’s Unnatural Disaster report pointed out that current energy policies favoring fossil fuels made it “more likely that there will be disasters like Katrina in the future.” It explained that global climate disruption increases temperatures thereby causing sea level rise, a big threat to the Gulf Coast, and that climate disruption models suggest a shift […]
Joseph Tomain | August 28, 2015
Natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina,1 Superstorm Sandy,2 and the typhoon that devastated Fukushima,3 as well as technical weaknesses that caused the Northeast blackout in October 2003,4 and regulatory failures that ended California electric industry restructuring efforts5 share two commonalities. First, they all affect the energy system at enormous costs in economic losses and in disrupted lives.6 Indeed, severe weather events […]
Sidney A. Shapiro | August 27, 2015
With the ten-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina upon us, looking back on CPR’s landmark report on the disaster reveals two essential public policy insights. One is that a series of government policy failures resulted in a far worse disaster than would have occurred if government had been more pro-active. The second is that more effective government requires addressing […]
Thomas McGarity | August 26, 2015
In Albert O. Hirschman’s brilliant analysis of conservative responses to progressive social programs entitled The Rhetoric of Reaction, he identifies and critiques three reactionary narratives that conservatives use to critique governmental programs — the futility thesis; the jeopardy thesis; and the perversity thesis. The futility thesis posits that governmental attempts to cure social ills or […]
Matt Shudtz | August 25, 2015
Recently, six CPR Member Scholars sat down for an hour-long conversation about the lessons that policymakers have—and have not—learned in the years since Hurricane Katrina blew through the Gulf Coast and stretched our flawed flood-protection infrastructure past its limits. As explained in our groundbreaking report, Unnatural Disaster: The Aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, published just weeks after […]
| August 24, 2015
As readers of this blog and watchers of the Bay restoration process understand, states are under increasing scrutiny regarding their progress, or lack thereof, implementing the Chesapeake Bay Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) as we approach the 2017 midpoint assessment. But behind the scenes, a federal-state partnership known as the Chesapeake Bay Program is also […]
Katie Tracy | August 18, 2015
Thousands of U.S. workers die every year because of on-the-job exposure to unsafe levels of crystalline silica, a toxic dust common in the construction, sandblasting, and mining industries. Even at the current legal limits, inhaling the tiny toxic particles poses a significant risk to workers of silicosis—an incurable and fatal disease that attacks the lungs—and […]