Oak Ridge contractors' pay frozen

Knoxville News Sentinel ^ | December 18, 2010 | Frank Munger

[SteveH]

Oak Ridge contractors' pay frozen 2-year halt will affect about 9,000 workers By Frank Munger Posted December 18, 2010 at midnight

OAK RIDGE - Thousands of Oak Ridge contractor employees will be affected by a two-year pay freeze announced Friday by the U.S. Department of Energy.

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[Red_Devil 232]

..."the action doesn't affect workers covered by collective-bargaining agreements."

Well isn't that special. The Union workers are not affected! They are the ones that should be put on wage freezes.

[DugwayDuke]

I’m curious. How does the government freeze wages of employees of a contractor? Aren’t those wages set by agreement between the contractor and the employees? Have we gotten to the point where the government can dictate wages paid by the private sector?

[wardaddy]

it’s written bad.....I think they are talking about folks who work at OR who are treated as private contractors and who have 1099s filed on them and must do their own taxes etc and are not treated as govt employees and that large benefits add on that goes with it and all that

it’s just a cheaper way to hire folks to do work...i do it myself

and i think they are saying they are freezing what they pay those style workers

i could be wrong

[applpie]

i would expect more of the same—all but unions and feds will see their salaries frozen. most folks outside washington don’t get the concept of “contractor” and will probably be fooled that this is part of a federal salary freeze.

[Squantos]

Exempt, exempt non bargining are hit on this DOE crap. Bargining union an non union are still locked in contracts.

Our company saw this coming an gave 3X bonus an Merit raises in September before the FY 11 fiasco.

Obligatory Obama sucks statement an I am back to watchin football game.

Merry New Year my friend.

[PAR35]

..."the action doesn't affect workers covered by collective-bargaining agreements."

There is a reason folks join unions. And this will be a great recruiting tool for the union. Which is probably why the administration did it.

Companies (and governments) usually get the unions that they deserve.

[hosepipe]

The pay should be frozen with employee layoffs..say 10% to start..

[krogers58]

Likewise at Argonne National Labs

[SteveH]

I’m curious. How does the government freeze wages of employees of a contractor? Aren’t those wages set by agreement between the contractor and the employees? Have we gotten to the point where the government can dictate wages paid by the private sector?

I do not know the specifics, but each time a DOE contractor gives a pay raise to an employee the DOE contractor may be contractually required to seek prior DOE authorization. In this case, the DOE would then simply be giving prior notice with this announcement to all of its contractors, and through them, to all of the contractors' employees, that no DOE contractor employee raises will be approved by DOE for two years. Under this hypothesis, the DOE contractor could still seek approval for a DOE contractor employee raise, but it would be worse than pointless to do so, since the DOE would then be given justification to ask the DOE contractor why it is wasting time and money asking for something that it has already been given notice that it will not be granted.

Note that according to the article, all DOE contractor union employees covered by union collective bargaining agreements are not affected. This also may be a contractual consideration, since in order for the DOE to enforce the rule on DOE contractor union employees covered by union collective bargaining agreements, the DOE would be effectively a third party agent requiring the contractor to break the prior in-place contractor-union contract. Technically, this would, if actually performed, appear to be something like union-busting, which may violate other prior federal laws already in place...

[chemengineer42]

you are wrong, it applies to all people who work for the main site contractor. DOE determines the salary increases each year, I suppose the contrator could give a raise out of the corporate funds, like that would ever happen

[wardaddy]

a big chunk of stimulus went to pat govt unions pension exposure and same for autos we bailed out

[DugwayDuke]

Usually, the contractor is paid a set rate as specified in the contract. It’s up to the contractor to manage wages paid and benefits and overhead leaving any thing left over to the contractor as profit.

I simply don’t know of any authority to set contractor pay scales. Here’s my problem with this: if the Energy Department can specified actually wages paid (not labor rates charged), then the government has the power to set wages across the entire spectrum of any company doing business with the government.

There are a lot of liberals who would like to see that authority established. They would use this to correct ‘pay disparities’ between classes of people (correct gender, race, etc, discrimination).

I suspect there will be a large number of lawsuits about this and predict the government will lose.

[wardaddy]

I hope you are correct. I have never heard of the govt capping wages for private contractor’s employees

though they do set other parameters for govt contracts sometimes...especially as you noted ..minority participation

[DugwayDuke]

I suspect that Chu is trying to offset potential morale problems with his government employees by trying to extend the wage ‘freeze’ to contractor personnel. Kind of curious, Obama’s executive order specifically exempted performance based increases which Chu’s memo seems to freeze. Also, Obama’s executive order and memorandum only apply to government employees.

I found this in another thread:

“Washington DC - Following President Obama’s recent proposal for a two-year pay freeze for all civilian federal workers, U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu today announced a decision to stop salary and bonus pool increases for site and facility management contractor employees, who manage day-to-day operations at certain Department of Energy sites and facilities, including national laboratories.”

“As our nation continues to recover from these challenging economic times, households and small businesses across the country are making sacrifices,” said Chu. “In this spirit, we are asking our contractor employees, who are doing important research, operations, and environmental cleanup work, to join the federal workforce in playing a part.”