News

AGC Wins Round One against Blacklisting Executive Order

Amendment Added to House Defense Bill

In what may be a 12-round bout, AGC won round one to block President Obama’s Blacklisting Executive Order. Late last night, the House Armed Services Committee added an AGC-backed provision to the National Defense Authorization Act—a bill that has been annually enacted into law for 54 consecutive years—that ensures the EO will not apply to Department of Defense and National Nuclear Security Administration contracts. AGC will work to expand the application of the EO government-wide when the bill hits the House floor and during consideration in the Senate.

Under the EO, both prime and subcontractors must report 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. A single violation, or a combination of multiple violations, 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. Such determinations would be made on an individual contracting officer basis with assistance from newly-created agency labor law compliance advisors.

For more information, contact Jimmy Christianson at 703-837-5325 or christiansonj@agc.org.

Contractor Type
Industry Priorities