Tommy Wells/Flickr
Today, workers in hundreds of cities across the United States will take to the streets to protest meager minimum wages that are keeping them in poverty. Fight For 15 organizers and activists are speaking out against low wages. McDonald's, Walmart, and other mega-corporations employ a good number of those workers, but the biggest creator of low-wage jobs in the United States is none other than the federal government through federal contracting.
In 2013, a coalition of labor groups started Good Jobs Nation (GJN) to fight to increase and recover wages for government contract employees. On April 9 of this year, GJN released a report, "The Return of Federal Sweatshops? How America's Broken Contract Wage Laws Fail Workers," which details how the federal government creates poverty-wage jobs and how workers on federal contract routinely don't receive their fair amount of pay. Alongside the report, the organization also filed a complaint to the U.S. Department of Labor on behalf of workers employed by federal contractors who are being compensated well below the legal amount.
GJN alleges that the employees in the complaint have been cheated out of $1,578,700 in unpaid wages and benefits, and that the employers are in violation of the Service Contract Act (SCA). Signed in 1965 by President Lyndon B. Johnson, the SCA was intended to guarantee that federal contractors had to pay their employees no less than a minimum wage and benefit rate set for their occupation and locality. Currently, more than 44,000 different contracts covered by the SCA receive $92 billion each year in federal dollars.
A quick glance around our nation's capital shows how endemic the problem is. The entire night-cleaning staff at the Lyndon B. Johnson Building in Washington, D.C., the headquarters for the U.S. Department of Education, is grossly underpaid. Sonia and Anibal Chavez are contract janitors who clean Secretary Arne Duncan's personal office; they can barely make ends meet. "We rely on public aid and charity to feed our children," Sonia said on a press call with GJN.
She and her husband are paid $9.50 an hour but, according to the SCA, they should be making $11.38 plus another $4.02 in fringe benefits because they don't receive health insurance. "Secretary Duncan talks about a race to the top on education, why not a race to the top on wages?" says Sonia. The Chavezes' predicament is not unusual.
Adom Kezie has been a groundskeeper at the National Zoo for six years, having emigrated from Africa, where he left behind his wife and daughter. "I came to America to give them a better life, but I cannot with my meager earnings," lamented Kezie.
Like the Chavezes, Kezie makes $9.50. He should be earning $13.07 plus $4.02 for the fringe benefits, because he doesn't receive any health insurance or other benefits. "Back home everyone believed in the American dream, but when I got here, I learned that dream is out of reach," said Kezie on a press call.
Despite working at high-profile places, Kezie and the Chavezes were flying under the radar until GJN took up their cause.
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How many federal contractors at less visible workplaces outside the nation's capital are also violating the SCA?
Because it's unlikely that a such a gridlocked Congress will act on this, GJN is urging President Barack Obama to use his executive authority to ensure that workers who are employed by federal contractors receive fair pay. In 2014, the president issued an executive order requiring federal contractors to pay workers at least $10.10 an hour and another that bolsters procedures that review contractors' compliance of labor laws.
In their report, GJN calls for two major actions. Using his executive pen, Obama should build on this precedent to make sure all federal contractors are playing by the rules and paying a living wage. Strengthening SCA enforcement would be a good start, though Obama could also create a preference in federal contracting for employers that pay their workers at least $15 an hour, offer decent benefits, and respect the right of workers to collectively bargain.
Ignoring the plight of these workers employed by contractors who routinely flout the law effectively keeps millions of workers in poverty. The federal government should be fighting to bring more people into the middle class, not keep them out.
