NLRB Will Report Federal Contractors’ Labor Violations

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

July 6, 2016
By Lawrence E. Dubé

July 5 – The National Labor Relations Board is preparing to report alleged labor law violations by government contractors named by regional directors in unfair labor practice complaints, the agency disclosed in a memorandum to its field offices.

Associate General Counsel Anne Purcell wrote July 1 in Memorandum OM 16-23 that the NLRB will ask charged employers to provide information that could identify them as federal contractors.

When an employer is named in an unfair labor practice complaint, the NLRB will report the information to a federal database to comply with the Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces executive order President Obama signed on July 31, 2014.

The executive order requires the NLRB and other agencies to assist contracting agencies and officials in assessing labor law violations by employers with government contracts valued at more than $500,000.

The NLRB won’t forward information to the database if an employer settles or resolves an unfair labor practice case before the issuance of a complaint.

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Executive Order Will Make It Harder For Federal Contractors To Violate Workers’ Rights

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

A new executive order from President Obama will make it harder for companies to win federal contracts if they violate their workers’ rights and withhold their wages, the White House announced Thursday.

Under the new rules, companies that apply for federal contracts larger than half a million dollars will have to disclose any major labor law violations they or their subcontractors have committed in the previous three years. Agencies will prioritize companies with clean records over those that abuse their workers’ rights when weighing contract bids. Each executive branch agency will have a specific bureaucrat in charge of determining whether a company’s lapses “rise to the level of a lack of integrity or business ethics,” according to a White House fact sheet on the rules.

The package of reforms will also prohibit companies that do business with the government from requiring their workers to agree to arbitration processes for workplace harassment or civil rights complaints, guaranteeing that workers who are sexually harassed or discriminated against can get their day in court.

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