Prevailing Wage | The Contracting Education Academy

December 31, 2013 By cs

Study finds federal contracts given to flagrant violators of labor laws

A new congressional report criticizes the federal government for awarding tens of billions of dollars in contracts to companies even though they were found to have violated safety and wage laws and paid millions in penalties. Issued on behalf of the Democratic senators on the Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee, the report cited examples over the past six years.

For instance, Imperial Sugar had $94.8 million in federal contracts last year, even though it paid $6 million in safety penalties over a 2008 factory explosion in Georgia that killed 14 workers. The report also noted that the federal government had awarded $4.2 billion in contracts to Tyson Foods since 2000, even though Tyson has faced more than $500,000 in safety penalties since 2007 and 11 of its workers have died on the job since 1999.

The report urges the government to weigh a company’s safety and wage violations more closely as it awards contracts, which are about $500 billion a year to companies employing 26 million workers, representing 22 percent of the nation’s work force. It stops short of recommending automatic suspension of contracts or debarring contractors that were found to have violated federal laws, partly because government agencies were sometimes at fault, a committee staff member said.

“Taxpayer dollars are routinely being paid to companies that are putting the livelihoods and the lives of workers at risk,” the report said. “Many of the most flagrant violators of federal workplace safety and wage laws are also recipients of large federal contracts.”

Keep reading this article at: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/11/business/study-finds-federal-contracts-given-to-flagrant-violators-of-labor-laws.html

March 11, 2011 By cs

OMB not moving to implement ‘high road’ contracting policy

A controversial plan that would provide contractors that pay their employees higher wages and benefits a leg up when bidding for contracts is not currently under active consideration for implementation by the White House, according to President Obama’s nominee to serve as deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget.

During her confirmation hearing on Tuesday, Heather Higginbottom told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee that the administration is not considering the so-called High Road policy right now.

After the hearing, an administration official told Government Executive that the agency is “considering the views of Congress, the private sector, and others with respect to possible initiatives and no decision has been made.”

The committee’s ranking member, Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, along with other Republicans, has argued the proposal would raise the price of contracting, do little to increase efficiencies in the acquisition system and force many small businesses out of the federal marketplace.

Administration officials previously had declined to discuss the status of the proposed policy. But with the proposal failing to garner the support of most acquisition experts and the administration reforming its rule-making process, most observers had suggested privately that the plan might be dead on the vine.

Higginbottom generally sailed through her confirmation hearing with little criticism or controversy and appears on her way to assuming the agency’s No. 2 spot.

The nominee, who most recently served as deputy assistant to Obama and deputy director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, faced relatively little direct criticism of her experience or qualifications.

But she was forced to repeatedly defend the administration’s fiscal 2012 budget proposal against tough grilling by Republican senators, who questioned whether the plan goes far enough to cut the budget deficit.

“It is time to make the tough choices necessary to place the country on a responsible fiscal path and focus on our long-term challenges,” Higginbottom said. “This means cutting where we can and making the investments necessary to foster continued economic growth and job creation for our long-term global competitiveness.”

Higginbottom generally played it safe with her answers, highlighting the administration’s top management priorities, including reforming federal contracting and improving the management of information technology. She often declined to speculate on other ongoing initiatives such as the potential reorganization of federal agencies.

Nominated for the OMB post in January, Higginbottom has more than a decade of experience on Capitol Hill and the executive branch, including time as policy director for Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign.

From 1999 through 2007, Higginbottom worked for Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., in several positions, including as legislative director. She also served as the deputy national policy director for the Kerry-Edwards 2004 presidential campaign. Kerry on Tuesday introduced Higginbottom in opening remarks to the committee.

Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., said the panel likely will vote on Higginbottom’s nomination next week, and he expects she will be confirmed.

[This story has been updated to include additional information from the Obama administration.]

– by Robert Brodsky – GovExec.com – March 8, 2011

February 1, 2011 By cs

Agency watchdog wants more power to target contractors

A small Labor Department office is giving companies another worry about tough oversight by seeking more power to investigate federal contractors about potential pay discrimination, primarily against veterans and disabled people.Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) plans to do away with George W. Bush administration-era guidelines on checking companies’ equal pay because it says the guidelines are too restrictive or simply not used.

“The rigidity of the current standards represents a significant departure from OFCCP’s traditional tailoring” to investigations, according to Jan. 3 Federal Register announcement to rescind the rules.

The Bush administration in 2006 set up a statistical approach to their reviews. Under those rules, discrimination must show a pattern or practice of disparate treatment and use a multiple regression analysis to identify compensation discrimination.

However, the Obama administration says those rules impose “overly narrow investigation procedures that go beyond what is required by law.” In addition, OFCCP officials say companies haven’t used guidance laid out by the previous administration on companies doing voluntary self-analyses of their compensation.

OFCCP officials now intend to get rid of the restrictive rules and use their own discretion to develop procedures to investigate contractors. Their plan is to continually refine the procedures to make them most effective.

“OFCCP will reinstitute the practice of exercising its discretion to develop compensation discrimination investigation procedures,” officials wrote in the notice.

The small office has already been checking out government contractors.

Rebecca Springer, counsel at the Crowell and Morning law firm, said eight of the last 10 companies’ audits that she worked on included checks by the OFCCP.

Despite the office’s increased efforts to expand its authority to act, contractors won’t have as much information on how OFCCP will go about reviewing compensation and wages to veterans and individuals with disabilities. By doing away with the detailed statistical analyses, she said officials will take a more simple approach to reviewing companies based on the resources available to the office.

“I think we are potentially headed back to an era of much greater secrecy as to how they are analyzing compensation,” Springer said during a webinar this month.

She also expects more regulations this spring and summer about OFCCP. There could possibly be new legislation to expand OFCCP’s authority in investigating companies.

Springer recommends companies should aggressively push back against the OFCCP if they have evidence of equal compensation and no discrimination against to certain people.

– by Matthew Weigelt – Jan. 25, 2011 – Federal Computer Week.

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