PSC: “Fair Pay” Final Rule Fails to Overcome Implementation Obstacles

Arlington, Va., August 24, 2016—The final FAR rule and Department of Labor Guidance implementing Executive Order 13673 on “Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces” fail to satisfy legitimate concerns about how the requirements will be implemented and enforced, the Professional Services Council (PSC) said today. The rule and guidance are scheduled to be published tomorrow and take effect on October 25, 2016.

“While we acknowledge the government’s efforts to respond to comments provided by stakeholders in industry and elsewhere, the accommodations provided in the final rule and guidance fail to mitigate the fundamentally flawed rationale for the Executive Order and the rulemaking,” said David Berteau, PSC’s President and CEO. “The implementing rules continue to shift the burden for reporting, compliance, and decision-making onto federal contracting officers as well as contractors and subcontractors.”

Among the modifications made to the final rules are a phase-in of the implementation for lower value contracts and for subcontractors, as well as delaying the application of a three-year lookback period for reporting. In addition, subcontractors, rather than their prime contractors, will be responsible for directly reporting their own labor law violations and the requirement to report most state labor law infractions will be addressed via a separate federal rulemaking process. Nevertheless, these modifications fail to address stakeholder concerns, and the rule does not remedy the significant, duplicative burdens placed on federal contracting officers, prime contractors, and subcontractors.

“As the government itself recognizes, there has been no overwhelming problem with contractor labor law violations. At best, implementing the Executive Order and the new rule and guidelines is a sheer duplication of the responsibility of the Labor Department and other agencies. At worst, it’s a huge new, costly burden of collecting information. That burden would rest on the contractors, on the thousands or tens of thousands of subcontractors, and on contracting officers across the government,” Berteau said. “PSC continues to believe that the government should devote the necessary resources to the agencies with existing responsibility for identifying and correcting violations of law.”

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About PSC: PSC is the voice of the government technology and professional services industry. PSC’s more than 400 member companies represent small, medium and large businesses that provide federal agencies with services of all kinds, including information technology, engineering, logistics, facilities management, operations and maintenance, consulting, international development, scientific, social, environmental services, and more. Together, the trade association’s members employ hundreds of thousands of Americans in all 50 states. Follow PSC on Twitter @PSCSpeaks.