Senate labor committee Chairman Lamar Alexander on Wednesday made the following statement on the administration’s release of its final “blacklisting” regulations implementing the president’s 2014 executive order:
“These regulations will bury federal contractors and subcontractors under mountains of paperwork and then prevent some from getting work for a labor violation they didn’t commit. Current law is already clear that when federal contractors violate labor laws, they will be punished.
Instead of rolling out more federal regulations that put a drag on productivity and our economy, the administration should instead focus on ways to enable workplace innovation and job creation. Meanwhile, Congress will work to send our defense authorization bill to the president’s desk to exempt defense contracts from these regulations so that the men and women working to ensure our national security are not bogged down in needless red tape.”
Earlier this year, Senator Alexander joined Republican Senators Jim Inhofe (R-Ok.), Bill Cassidy (R-La.), Mike Enzi (R-Wy.), Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), David Vitter (R-La.), and Roger Wicker (R-Ms.) in requesting a provision included in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for fiscal year 2017 that would exclude defense contracts from the administration’s executive order save for those that have been debarred or otherwise suspended. The House-passed version of the bill also includes language to exempt defense contracts from these regulations. Defense contractors account for the majority of all federal contractors.