[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

[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...