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AGC Opposes Blacklisting Executive Order Anchor


AGC noted its opposition to President Obama’s “Fair Pay and Safe Work Places” Executive Order (EO), commonly referred to as the “Blacklisting” EO in a letter to members of the House Education and Workforce Committee. The executive order would allow contracting officers to deny contractors the right to compete for work on an individual contract-by-contract basis based on a contracting officer’s review of contractor labor and safety violations of state and federal laws.

In the letter, AGC noted that it supports sensible and effective means to protect the health, safety and livelihood of construction contractors’ most valuable asset: their employees. However, this EO neither sensibly nor effectively addresses those concerns. AGC explained that the EO will function in an unreasonable, inconsistent and ineffective manner, excluding from service to the government not only bad-actor contractors, but also well-intentioned, ethical contractors. The EO needlessly creates a complicated and unmanageable bureaucracy to address problems for which a host of federal laws, regulations and bureaucracies already hold jurisdiction. Furthermore, the EO will lead to crippling delays in federal contracting, encourage unnecessary litigation, and increase procurement costs to the government and taxpayers.

AGC expects the Department of Labor and Federal Acquisition Regulation Council to propose guidance and rules implementing the EO shortly. As such, AGC will continue to advocate against this unnecessary, ineffective and unreasonable measure.

For more information, please contact Jim Young at youngj@agc.org or Jimmy Christianson at christiansonj@agc.org. Return to Top