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.
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