$15 an Hour for Federal Contractors Is Great. A Union Is Better.

[TexasTowelie]

After Democrats in March voted down a national $15 minimum wage, President Biden signed an executive order raising it for federal contractors to $15 an hour by 2022. This is an excellent if insufficient step, both for the national Fight for $15 and for low-wage federal contractors. It’s heartening to see the president use the powers of the executive branch to improve workers’ lives when faced with a setback in Congress. But this is far from the most powerful move Biden, who has proclaimed himself “the most pro-union president,” could make with the power of procurement. With the stroke of a pen, he could reinvigorate the American labor movement by prioritizing workplaces with collective-bargaining agreements for federal contracts.

The government spent over $586 billion on federal contracts in fiscal year 2018, long before it spent trillions addressing the COVID-19 crisis. These funds finance millions of contract workers, according to a Brookings Institution study. They stretch across almost every industry in the American economy, from construction to technology, defense to health care. Compared to workers directly employed by the federal government, however, few of these contractors are unionized. If Biden is to govern as the serious “union guy” he claimed to be on the campaign trail, he could order the federal government’s massive contracting apparatus to exclusively hire union workplaces, “unless there is no such supplier that can perform that contract at a reasonable cost or comparable quality,” as labor lawyer and author Thomas Geoghegan wrote.

What, you might ask, would be the legal basis of such a determination? The basic foundation of labor law in this country. The National Labor Relations Act remains the law of the land and holds that it is “the policy of the United States” to encourage “the practice and procedure of collective bargaining.”

Actually taking this long-standing law seriously would turn the tables on big business, forcing them to drop their staunch opposition to unions if they ever wanted a public contract again. Major companies as diverse as UnitedHealth Group, Deloitte, AT&T, and Lockheed Martin take on federal contracts. This would open the floodgates to new organizing in the private sector, where employers have waged brutal, well-funded opposition campaigns to combat unions. One can only imagine how different the failed Bessemer, Alabama, RWDSU drive would have been if Amazon, a major federal contractor, did not spend big opposing its employees. It would help buoy private-sector unions whose membership rolls have been declining for decades.

Read more: https://prospect.org/day-one-agenda/15-dollars-an-hour-federal-contractors-great-union-better-biden-executive-order/
(American Prospect)

[ColinC]

1. As a federal contractor, I approve.

Sooo... frikkin... much. Thank you for this post.

[TexasTowelie]

2. You're welcome.

It would be interesting to see how many businesses would cooperate and bring in a union in order to keep their federal contracts. It would spark a labor movement across the country.

[ColinC]

4. Absolutely

It could singlehandedly bring back labor unions....

[FBaggins]

3. The author will need better arguments than those presented

It’s useful rhetoric to claim that he would just be enforcing the NLRA, but the act can’t be read in quite the way the author claims.

We are told that the text of the act itself makes it the government’s purpose to encourage collective bargaining. Even were that true, “encourage” could not be read to give him the power to “require” collective bargaining. But the act doesn’t even say what is claimed. The “freedom of association” includes the right to not unionize... as long as that was their choice.

The recent Amazon vote was fairly overwhelming. It would be tough to spin the proposed executive action at promoting their freedoms if it rejects their freedom to say no.