Urge Your Senators to Repeal Blacklisting
Following a concerted AGC advocacy effort coordinated in conjunction with business organization partners, the House today voted 236-187 to repeal the regulations implementing former-President Obama’s “Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces”—commonly called Blacklisting—Executive Order. Now, action moves to the Senate. Please contact your U.S. Senators and urge them to repeal the blacklisting regulations.
Under the blacklisting regulations, both prime and subcontractors must report violations and alleged violations of 14 federal labor laws and “equivalent” state labor laws during the previous three years, and again every six months, on federal contracts over $500,000. Prime contractors would also be responsible for evaluating the labor law violations of their subcontractors at all tiers during both contract solicitation and contract performance. A single alleged violation could lead a contracting officer to either (1) deny a prime contractor the right to compete for a federal contract; or (2) remove a prime contractor or subcontractor from an ongoing project. A federal court halted implementation of the Blacklisting regulations on Oct. 24, 2016. That litigation continues.
A Senate vote on repealing the Blacklisting regulations may come as soon as early next week. This is one of a handful of regulations issued in the final months of the previous administration—typically referred to as midnight regulations—that Republicans plan to repeal under what is called the Congressional Review Act, which only requires a simple majority (51 votes) in the Senate for a regulation repeal bill to pass. There are 52 Republican Senators in Senate.
Again, please contact U.S. Senators and urge them to repeal the Blacklisting regulations. For more information on the Blacklisting regulations and AGC’s advocacy efforts against them since 2014, click here.
For more information, please contact Jimmy Christianson at [email protected] or (703) 837-5325.