Labor & Employment

On April 26, 2011, the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs formally proposed regulations to update contractor affirmative action obligations concerning veterans. The proposed rules impose additional obligations on covered federal contractors and subcontractors. For the first time, OFCCP is seeking to impose quantitative measurements to assess the hiring of protected veterans, self-identification invitations…

Title 41 of the U.S. Code holds many of the key laws governing contracts with the federal government. A four-year effort to organize this collection of public contract laws and remove “ambiguities, contradictions, and other imperfections” was completed on January 4, 2011. The President’s signature on Public Law No. 111-350, 124 Stat. 367 (Jan. 4, 2011) [pdf] has the effect of renumbering the entirety of Title 41 and giving new section numbers to many of the most important government contract laws.

Once again a contractor covered by the Davis-Bacon Act has been penalized for not maintaining adequate payroll records. In Pythagoras General Contracting Corp. v. Dep’t of Labor, ARB Nos. 08-107 & 09-007, ALJ No. 2005-DBA-14 (Feb. 10, 2011) [pdf], the DOL’s Administrative Review Board upheld a determination to debar the contractor from getting any future federal contracts for up to three years and increasing the monetary penalty significantly.

The Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs has been busy the past few months and anticipates heightened activity in the months to come. New OFCCP initiatives include: (1) asserting jurisdiction over healthcare providers, (2) revamping efforts to identify workers misclassified as contractors; (3) proposing new affirmative action regulations for construction contractors; and (4) increasing enforcement…

In National Aeronautics and Space Administration v. Nelson, No. 09-530 (U.S. Jan. 19, 2011) [pdf], the Supreme Court concluded that employees of government contractors can be subjected to the same background checks conducted on federal civil servants, without violating the privacy protections in the Constitution. The decision specifically rejects a challenge to questions about the past use of illegal drugs, including whether prospective contractor employees had previously received treatment or counseling for drug use.