Rodney Bridgett was killed when a piece of Tyson Foods’ heavy equipment crushed him. Calvin Bryant was crippled in a Imperial Sugar plant explosion in Georgia that also killed 14 of his co-workers. When Alma Aranda tried to exercise her legal right to take unpaid time off to care for her dying mother, Verizon harassed her with so much paperwork that her hair fell out in clumps.
What do these 3 cases have in common? The federal government handed out tens of millions of dollars in contracts to these companies, without regard to how they treated their workers.
In effect, the federal government has been subsidizing contractor misconduct with our tax dollars. As long as federal contractors have known that their lawbreaking would not jeopardize the next contract, they have had little financial incentive to stop mistreating their workers.
Government rules that require it to contract only with companies that have a “satisfactory record of performance, integrity, and business ethics.” In practice, the contracting system does not effectively review companies’ records for responsibility, nor does it ensure—before awarding contracts—that violators reform their practices.
As a result companies have continued to receive billions of dollars, despite long records of violating workplace laws. They may neglect legally required safety standards and maim a worker on the job, systematically engage in age or gender discrimination, refuse to pay overtime in violation of the law, or ignore the Americans with Disabilities Act and demote or fire disabled employees.
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